Facts about Treeline

We are cheesemakers, not cheese fakers!

From humble beginnings in his kitchen, and long before vegan cheese was “a thing,” our cheese-loving founder (an avid environmentalist and animal rescuer) had a dream - to create a new kind of cheese - a cheese, in the European tradition, with rich, complex flavors and a soft, creamy texture - that is totally free from animal products. Treeline cashew cheeses are the culmination of his many years of dedication and hard work in pursuit of that dream.

These days food - even vegan food - is become more and more engineered and industrialized. But at Treeline, we firmly believe that the best food - real food - is still made in a kitchen, not in a science lab. That’s why we craft our cheese the old fashioned way - in our own dedicated facility - using real simple ingredients, and traditional culturing techniques.

package of treeline vegan pimento cheese and crackers

This is how we make our cheese...

  • a photo of a fruiting cashew tree

    It all starts with West African and Brazilian cashews - nurtured by tropical rainfall not aquifer-draining irrigation.

  • whole cashews in a burlap sack

    Our cashews are machine processed on site, improving workers' lives and ensuring food safety.

  • a bowl of cashew cream with a wooden spoon

    We transform the cashews into a rich cream which we culture with probiotics. No food starch, coconut, or palm oil.

  • Treeline Herb Garlic French-Style Cashew Cheese in its green and gold packaging

    The result is a delicious, creamy vegan cheese with lots of protein and very little saturated fat.

Why do we make our cheese out of cashews and not animal milk?

Of course, there’s the unique flavor and texture of cultured cashews. But there’s a lot more. First and foremost cashews allow us to make really amazing cheeses with exploiting animals. Plus cashew trees, unlike livestock, don’t produce climate changing carbon - they sequester it. As an added bonus, cashews get their water from tropical rainfall, so they don’t drain precious aquifers like thirsty cows (and almonds) do.

mother cow and calf

Doesn’t Making Cashew Milk Produce a Lot of Waste?

Not at all! We make our cashew cheeses out of the entire cashew nut. This means we don’t generate any whey or pulp as by-products - keeping food waste to a minimum and helping to keep our ground water clean.

two hands holding cashew nuts

Where do you get your nuts?

Our cashews come from Brazil and the Ivory Coast. This keeps our carbon footprint to a minimum because they are the closest possible sources and their cashew kernels are packed in-country, providing good paying jobs to local people. They also happen to produce the best cashews on the planet.

a map of the world showing shipping routes of cashews

Shouldn’t vegan cheese be really healthy?

Of course it should! Your heart health is as important to us as your eating pleasure! That’s why we avoid using high saturated fat coconut or palm oils and why we go easy on the salt, without compromising flavor or texture.

a chart showing saturated fat content of different vegan cheesesa chart showing saturated fat content of different vegan cheeses