SEPT. 30, 2019 • WINE SPECTATOR 41RE
MY
HA
LE
“D
airy farmers from Europe thought they had
landed in heaven when they got here,” says Rick
Lafranchi, co-owner of Nicasio Valley Cheese
in the grassy hills north of San Francisco. His
grandfather, a Swiss immigrant, started the farm just over the hill
from Point Reyes in 1919, six decades after Russian and Italian im-
migrants brought dairying to California to feed the pioneers who
flooded the state in the 1849 gold rush. A decade later, Point Reyes
in western Marin County was the state’s leading dairy region.
Today, California produces more milk than any other state, some
40% of it becoming cheese, with many of the best coming from
cows still lazing under oak trees on those same rolling hills. Lakes
and bays gleam in the sun. Sheep and goats add to the diverse range
of cheeses. There are even a few water buffalo for mozzarella.Though impressive examples hail from all corners of California,
coastside Marin and central Sonoma are ideal places for a concen-
trated cheese tour. The likes of Cowgirl Creamery, maker of triple-
cream cheese of unique richness and body, and Vella Cheese, home
of cocoa-shrouded Dry Jack aged up to four years, await a visit. Local
restaurants create luscious cheese plates from these products too.
The modern cheese pioneers of the 1970s and early 1980s started
in Sonoma, where Ignacio “Ig” Vella turned his family’s commer-
cial creamery into a smaller cheesemaking operation focusing on
Dry Jack, a California original. Vella died in 2011, but not before
proclaiming himself the “godfather of artisanal cheese” in America.
He shares that distinction with Laura Chenel, who produced Amer-
ica’s first successful fresh chèvre, labeling it with her name. She
made it from her own goats and those of her Sonoma neighbors.CALIFORNIA
Cheese Country
by the Bay
SONOMA AND MARIN HEADLINE THE GOLDEN STATE FOR
CHEESE- AND WINE-LOVING VISITORS
BY HARVEY STEIMAN
The Boat Oyster Bar