This Cheese Stands Alone

A Hamden cheese manufacturer is aging as well as the products it sells — and is stretching its story further across town as business booms.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal passed through the plant of the company, Liuzzi Cheese, on Monday to celebrate a six-generation family business that has contributed to Connecticut’s economy since 1981 — and to see how his favorite ​“comfort food” is made.

Cheese Chairmen Nick Liuzzi and Lino Liuzzi, Italian immigrant brothers, came to Connecticut in 1960 and carried on their family’s craft by originating the label ​“Liuzzi Cheese” 20 years later. They joined sons Ralph and Domenic Liuzzi, Liuzzi Cheese’s CEO and COO in sharing their story with the senator on Monday.

Out of their Rosotto Drive home, the Liuzzi family has been churning out artisan cheeses like buffalo mozzarella and ricotta for more than 40 years. They are continuing in the tradition of their Neapolitan grandparents, who began making cheese in 1832. Domenic Liuzzi’s daughter, Francesca, an office administrator, represents the sixth generation of Liuzzi’s to stay stuck on cheese production.

“It’s more of an art than anything else,” said Ralph Liuzzi. That art has turned out to be a successful means of employment, and ​“joy,” as Blumenthal put it. 

Carmine Durante, Liuzzi’s vice president of sales and marketing, noted that the facility never had to shut down or lay off employees during the pandemic. Instead, Durante said, sales have taken off over the past couple years. 

With the help of the federal pandemic-relief Paycheck Protection Program, Liuzzi Cheese not only kept their crew working, but was able to renovate and update their Hamden facility. Last week, Durante said, Liuzzi Cheese signed a lease to rent another Hamden building in which to store surplus packaging and products. That’s a possible third location in addition to Liuzzi Cheese’s Hamden factory and North Haven storefront. 

Cheese is the ultimate ​“comfort food,” Blumenthal reflected. It can serve as a means of celebrating or grieving, he said. People come together across the country on any given occasion to ​“break bread, eat cheese, and drink wine,” he said. ​“If my wife allowed me to do it, I would just eat cheese morning to night.”

“We love being in Connecticut, because that’s how we started out,” Durante said, though the milk supply in state is ​“not as good as it used to be,” he pointed out, noting that the company typically purchases milk from upstate New York.

In addition to broadening their business within Hamden, Liuzzi Cheese is widening their customer base across the states; in two weeks, they will begin shipping their cheese to Hawaii, the 29th state which will stock their products.

“All from this little company that these two fine gentleman started,” Blumenthal stated, smiling at octogenarians Nicola and Lino Luizzi.

Liuzzi Cheese, he asserted, ​“is a great American success story.”