46 WINE SPECTATOR • SEPT. 30, 2019
PAIGEGREE
Nin San Francisco, a facility to produce their own natural cream
cheese and other fresh cheeses (and bagels, baked in a Montréal-
style wood-fired oven).
The stars of Tomales’ cheese lineup (all with names from the
language of the native Miwok tribes that once populated the land)
include Kenne, a lightly aged all-goat cheese, and Teleeka, which
uses milk from Tomales’ own goats and sheep, as well as cow’s milk
from a neighbor. The washed-rind Assa, a goat cheese aged four
months to semisoft status, is especially fine.
Audrey Hitchcock’s 52 water buffalos roam over Ramini Moz-
zarella’s 160-acre farm a few miles away. She started it in 2008 with
her husband, Craig, whose brother lived in Italy and introduced
them to mozzarella di bufala. Craig died in 2014, and Audrey, en-
couraged by her customers, has been going it alone ever since, with
recent help from her sister and one employee.
The Ramini mozzarella has a purity, and a texture that’s more
velvety than creamy, its light tang enough to identify it as buffalo.
Hitchcock loves the cheese, the buffalo even more. “Working this
farm with these animals kept me going,” she says. Working in mud
late into the night during weeks of winter rain, she kept telling her-
self, “If you keep the shovel going, the glass of wine will be there.”CENTRAL SONOMA
P
etaluma anchors a cheese landscape that overlaps vineyards
and wineries of such Sonoma County American Viticultural
Areas as Sonoma Valley, Petaluma Gap and Russian River
Valley. It also boasts sizable hotels and good restaurants, making it
an ideal place to headquarter for a visit centering on either fer-
mented delight.
Petaluma’s old-fashioned downtown, home to the quirky Metro
Hotel, looks like it hasn’t changed much since the mid-20th cen-
tury. At the Petaluma River marina off Highway 101, the more
modern Sheraton Sonoma County has access to walks around pic-
turesque wetlands. A half hour’s drive away is Santa Rosa, the larg-
est city in Sonoma County, with a fast-growing regional airport.
The town of Sonoma, a straight run across Highway 116 from
Petaluma, is home to Vella Cheese Company and its version of a
California original, Dry Jack.
“We didn’t invent it,” notes Vella cheesemaker Gabe Luddy,
whose grandfather Ig Vella certainly popularized a cheese beloved
for generations by California’s Italian community, which used it
interchangeably with Parmigiano-Reggiano. “My grandfather said
that 60 or more cheese companies made it at one point.”
Dry Jack represents half of Vella’s production, and the store sells
several variations aside from the regular pale-yellow version coated
in a mix of cocoa, pepper and oil and aged a minimum of seven
months. Special Select gets up to two years, and Golden Bear glows
deep gold with up to four years; Mezzo Secco is the same cheese
aged only a few months. Habañero Dry Jack, flecked with the chile
pepper of its name, makes a great snacking cheese. Perhaps the
most surprising taste is Romanello, a cow’s milk cheese made like
Dry Jack but with natural enzymes that create a character that’s a
dead ringer for Italian Pecorino Romano.
Locals and cheese tourists alike patronize the region’s farmers
markets for produce, eggs, meats and cheeses from spring to fall.The Italian culture of Switzerland informs Nicasio Valley Cheese,
a short detour off the road running from Point Reyes to Petaluma.
As owner Rick Lafranchi tells it, the California branch was visit-
ing family in Maggia Valley, where Lago Maggiore extends into
Switzerland from Italy. “I remember my dad saying, ‘Wouldn’t it
be great to make these cheeses with our milk?’ ” Years later, after
their father died, Rick and his brother Scott enlisted a cheesemaker
from Maggia to help do it.
A low-key visit to the small roadside shop, surrounded by ex-
pansive grazing land, provides a chance to sample most of the
brand’s 10 cheeses, all from the family’s own herd, and watch cheese
being made. Foggy Morning, a Fromage Blanc–style cheese, shows
off the purity of the milk. Nicasio Reserve, aged five months, relies
on buttery flavors and semifirm texture.
Midway between Point Reyes and Petaluma is the roadside
creamery of Marin French Cheese, where its Brie and other soft-
rind cheeses are available to taste and buy. Founded in San Fran-
cisco in 1865, it claims to be the longest continually operating
cheese company in the United States. It’s open to the public daily.
To the north, around the town of Tomales, two farmsteads offer
by-appointment guests the chance to get close to the various ani-
mals that make their succulent cheeses.
Tomales Farmstead Creamery is the brand name for products from
the 160-acre Toluma Farms, purchased in 2003 by San Franciscans
David Jablons and Tamara Hicks. It took four years to resuscitate the
abandoned farm. “We had restored homes and cars, so we thought
we knew how to do it,” Hicks says. “The motivation was ... protect-
ing something forever, putting it back into the foodshed here.”
They brought in goats and sheep to produce fluid milk and, in
2012, started making cheese. This year, they opened Daily Driver
Gabe Luddy of Vella Cheese Company