Like much of the Bay Area, Point Reyes Station was transformed during the dot-com boom. Once a dilapidated railroad town, the three-block main street now offers a variety of restaurants, two upscale bakeries and nearly a dozen clothing, toy, book and craft shops. The Cowgirl Creamery was opened here eight years ago by two veteran Berkeley chefs, Sue Conley of Bette's Oceanview Diner and Peggy Smith of Chez Panisse.
The cheese factory and Tomales Bay Foods, its distribution arm, are inside a renovated hay barn, along with an organic grocer and an impressive delicatessen, Indian Peach, that sells gourmet sandwiches and pizzas (including a winter pie of roast garlic, Swiss chard, potatoes, pancetta, mozzarella and thyme). But it's cheese -- or at least the smell of cheese -- that dominates here. A pungent, yet pleasant, odor wafts throughout the space. We watched through a massive plate-glass window as women in white smocks and hats mixed vats of milk and turned cheeses. Then we got down to business: tasting.
The cheeses stack up at the Cowgirl Creamery in Point Reyes Station, Calif.
(Jane Black)
|
|
At the counter, a man with a heavy moustache chewed thoughtfully on a slice of Red Hawk. His wife stood patiently beside him. "Go ahead and order. This could take a while," she told us. This, she explained, was his weekly cheese ritual. Each Saturday, they drove from the East Bay area, either to San Francisco or Marin, to taste and buy cheese for the week. She shrugged, then said: "He's happy."
We stood with her and watched her husband. Finally, he said: "Yes, that's very good. I'll have some of the Red Hawk." We ordered that, too, tossed it into the cooler and sped northeast toward Petaluma.
Petaluma, a pretty Victorian town on the Petaluma river, is the center of Northern California's cheese country. The surrounding fields are filled with black-and-white Holsteins and doe-eyed Jersey cows. Along the road, we passed signs warning cars to be alert to cyclists -- and crossing cattle.
Five miles up the road from Cowgirl Creamery is the Marin French Cheese Co., a country store and cafe that sells its own Rouge et Noir brand of cheese as well as gourmet treats such as smoked salmon, salami and olives. Pioneer Jefferson Thompson purchased a 700-acre ranch here in 1865, with plans to make simple cheese for the growing city of San Francisco. In 1900, the family changed its focus to soft-ripened, French-style cheeses such as Camembert and brie. ("French-style" is a euphemism, meaning that the cheeses use pasteurized, not raw, milk.) The shop is a bit Disney-esque, with cute "country" souvenirs. But the grounds -- five acres of lawns with picnic tables and a duck pond -- are lovely. We bought drinks and joined several families outside to sample a few of our collected cheeses. Lee Anne popped another Dairy Relief pill, and we dug in.
It was 2 p.m. by the time we got back on the road and headed to Larry Peter's Spring Hill dairy outside Petaluma. Peter started his Sonoma dairy in 1987, providing Jersey milk to local farmers. In 1998, he began to produce his own cheese.
Seven years later, Peter has big plans: In 2004, he purchased the old California Cooperative Dairy in Petaluma, where he will process more than 100,000 pounds of cheese a week. Next month he plans to open a retail shop and ice cream parlor and offer daily factory tours.
Peter doesn't produce gourmet cheese like his competitors -- most of it is packaged, pasteurized cheddar and Jack, though he does produce with some interesting flavors, such as sage and caraway. (The horseradish Jack makes an unbeatable grilled cheese sandwich.) But the 320-acre farm, set in rolling green hills, was a pleasant stop.
Our final destination was Sonoma. Though today we think of Sonoma as the heart of the wine country, it was, until the 1970s, mostly farms. The oldest cheesemaker in Sonoma is the Vella family -- family patriarch Tom began making cheddar in 1931. After the war, he began experimenting with creamy Jack cheeses -- which are named for Scotsman David Jacks, who had created the popular cheese outside Monterey during the gold rush of the mid-19th century.
The Vella Cheese factory stands in a converted stone brewery a few blocks off Sonoma Plaza. Unlike the glitzy tourist shops that have come to define the town, the dimly lit factory still has a 1950s feel. The cheeses are listed on a black plastic board in stick-on white letters. The shop also sells a selection of Italian olive oils and local wine.
Ignazio Vella, Tom's septuagenarian son, brags that his cheeses are sweeter and more delicately flavored than others, thanks to the sweet Sonoma grasses the cows graze on four miles out of town. And he's right. The rosemary Jack ($5.50) would hold its own on the most sophisticated cheese plate, as would his other Italian-style cheeses such as Fontinella and dry Asiago. We added some of each to the cooler.
Down the road, we visited the Cheesemaker's Daughter, owned, as you might guess, by a member of the Vella family, Ignazio's daughter Ditty. Opened in 2003, her upscale, modern shop stands in stark contrast to the family headquarters. Along with local cheeses, she offers an array of farmstead cheeses from across America and the world.
Ditty knows her cheeses. And heresy though it may be, she told us that she thinks artisan cheesemakers in Wisconsin are gaining on -- if not surpassing -- Californians. We tasted a triple creme called Les Freres, similar to a French Reblechon, and took a small slice. On her recommendation, we also bought a scrumptious Italian cheese called vento d'estate ("summer wind"), an aged cow's milk cheese wrapped in lavender, chervil and sage. At $25 a pound, it was pricey but worth it.
It was nearing 5 o'clock when we got back on the road to San Francisco. We had a lot of cheese -- but only a few hours before dinner to match them each with the perfect California wine. Jane Black last wrote for Travel about the Jurassic Coast of Dorset, England.
