Belle Chevre
26910 Bethel Road
Elkmont, AL 35620
256-423-2238
Tasia Malakasis is owner and president of Belle Chevre, an award-winning cheese producer located in Elkmont, Alabama. Malakasis provides the strategic vision, leadership, and creativity required to ensure the 20-year-old company continues to evolve as one of the country’s most acclaimed artisan creameries.
Malakasis, who built a successful career in high-tech marketing software, traveled a winding road prior to becoming a cheesemaker. Before acquiring Belle Chevre, Malakasis served as vice president of global product management and marketing for high-tech software startup PointRoll, where she was responsible for developing new products and marketing them globally.
After more than a decade on the professional fast track, Malakasis switched gears by enrolling at the Culinary Institute of America in New York. While visiting a Dean & Deluca store in Manhattan, she picked up a cheese and was stunned to learn that the producer, Belle Chevre, was located in her home state. She was so impressed that she contacted then owner and founder Liz Parnell and asked her to teach her the art of fine cheesemaking. She returned to Alabama to follow her true passion for food to become an apprentice cheesemaker and, acquired Belle Chevre 6 months later in 2007.
Although making goat cheese may seem worlds away from the fast-paced life of marketing high-tech software, the similarity is in Malakasis’ passion for what she does. Belle Chevre embodies her love of handcrafted, artisan food and the Southern region where it is produced. Since taking the lead at Belle Chevre in 2007, Malakasis has developed several new product lines and revamped the brand with a new graphic identity and marketing program.
Malakasis is a member of The American Cheese Society, The American Dairy Goat Association, Southern Foodways Alliance and Slow Food International.
She is a Cum Laude graduate of The University of Alabama, Huntsville where she received a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature.
We’re proud of our cheese. One look at the long list of kudos we’ve received and you’ll see why.
- We’ve garnered 51 national awards and hundreds of honorable mentions.
- Our Belle and the Bees Breakfast Cheese was awarded the 2009 Sofi Award for Outstanding New Product.
- All of our cheeses have won awards from the American Cheese Society and The American Dairy Goat Association.
- Steven Jenkins, author of Cheese Primer, declares Belle Chèvre an “American Treasure” and Liz Parnell one of the favored cheese makers in the country.
- We’ve received write-ups in internationally known magazines such as Ready Made, Real Simple, The New Yorker, Food & Wine, - Our name appears in authoritative texts on the subject of cheese, including:
The World Encyclopedia of Cheese by Juliet Harbutt
Cheese Primer by Steven Jenkins
Cheese, A Complete Guide To Over 300 Cheeses of Distinction by Julie Harbutt
The New American Cheese by Laura Werlin
Cook’s Kitchen Reference, Cheese, A Comprehensive Guide To Cheeses Of The World by Julie Harbutt
The All-American Cheese & Wine Book by Laura Werlin
Around The Southern Table by Sarah Belk
Goat Cheese by Georgeanne & Ethel Brennan
She’s helped us win a ton of awards. But we don’t let all the attention go to Belle’s head. Or ours. We’ll always use the same time-tested European farmstead technique to get that mild, yet distinctly flavored cheese for which we’re renowned.
