“Sometimes you have to leave a place to come back and appreciate it,” Tasia Malakasis refl ects. After growing up in Huntsville, she was eager for a change of scenery. A successful marketing career with high-tech companies took her from New York and New England to Silicon Valley. But she longed to blend her business savvy with her passion for food. A stint at the Culinary Institute of America convinced her she didn't want to be a chef. Then, in New York’s Dean and Deluca gourmet shop, she discovered Belle Chèvre, a fi ne Alabama cheese made not far from her hometown. “I didn’t know anything about cheese but thought Belle Chèvre had a good story and great potential,” she says. Since it began in 1989, the countr...