Sand Hill chocolate milk in top ten

by Susan Weikel -- Isidro Alves is the proud owner of Sand-Hill Dairy in Fallon, Nevada, where the chocolate milk has become legendary. Produced at his dairy and enjoyed by Nevada locals, this home-grown delicacy recently received a perfect score of a 10 from Perry James, a international critic of chocolate milk. The self-made chocolate milk critic, Perry James, came across the Sand-Hill Chocolate Milk on a trip to Sprouts in Las Vegas. Perry travels all over the world with his wife, and has sampled over 1,335 different chocolate milks from 51 countries around the world. Out of all those he has sampled for consistency, texture, and flavor, James has only given a perfect score of 10 to 24 of the milks. Sand-Hill Chocolate Milk is one of those 24. Sand-Hill Dairy was purchased from Dennis Hellwinkel in 2003. The farmstead operation (the animals that produce the milk to be used in the products live at the same location) is located on 50 acres and employs 5 people on the farm side of the business and 5 people on the processing side. “It’s two businesses in one.  The cow side which is what most dairies are, cows that produce the milk that is sold off to a third party. Then you have the other share of the dairy name, the plant side. That is what makes us unique. We are taking our own cows’ milk and processing it ourselves,” Isidro explains. “We can actually trace it from the cow’s feed all the way to the market. We can say that it came from us.” The business processes about 15% of the milk they produce, and the rest of the farm’s milk is sold to a third party. There are 450 cows on location. Most of the cows are a crossbreed between Holstein and Jersey. The Jersey milk has a higher fat and protein content which adds to the richness of the milk. The cows are segregated in pens depending on what product is being produced. Certain pens are for the milk, others for the cheese because of the higher butterfat. Sand Hill products include cheese, mainly Queso Fresco, a crumbly cheese used with many Hispanic meals, whole milk (old style cream top, not homogenized), and chocolate milk.  The plant processes chocolate milk once a week and whole milk several times a week. They have done some strawberry and right now, for the holiday season, are doing eggnog. Most of their distribution area for the milk is northern Nevada, Reno-Truckee area, once a week to Las Vegas, and the local community here in Fallon. The cheese can be found locally at Heck’s Meat Co., I7 Meats, and Skips. They have started to play around with producing 2% milk and heavy cream, but as of now, it is a work in progress. “Our local customers have said for a long time how great our chocolate milk was and this just kind of reinforces that. But, we don’t have magic cows. It’s premium chocolate milk. We use whole milk, premium ingredients, cane sugar verses liquid, and a premium chocolate. All that makes a difference,” Isidro proudly explains. The original version of this story appeared in the November 8, 2019 print edition of The Fallon Post.       Never miss a meeting or community event – keep an eye on the community calendar at https://www.thefallonpost.org/events/ If you like what we’re doing, please support our effort to provide local, independent news and contribute to The Fallon Post, your online news source for all things Fallon.