Wine Spectator – September 30, 2019

42 WINE SPECTATOR • SEPT. 30, 2019

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They hired a cheesemaker, installed cheese vats in one of the milk-

ing parlors and, in 2000, rolled out the inaugural wheels of Point

Reyes Original Blue, the first artisanal blue cheese in California.

The business beginnings of such farmsteads echo trends in re-

cent wine history, not just in California but across the wine world.

Just as independent grapegrowers, instead of selling their grapes to

wineries, found critical and economic success making their own

wines, many dairy farmers moved beyond selling fluid milk, an in-

come at the mercy of wildly fluctuating commodity prices, to mak-

ing cheese, a finished product that could yield steadier revenues.

They got financial help to develop such value-added products

from the Marin Agricultural Land Trust. “MALT” signs pop up regu-

larly along west Marin’s roads. Along with agricultural preserve

legislation in Sonoma, this land trust protection kept away develop-

ment on farmland just as preserves in Napa protected vineyards.

And just as wine lured people from successful careers elsewhere,

a similar passion drew others to the cheese world. Conley was a

restaurateur; her Bette’s Oceanview Diner was a Bay Area fixture

in its time. Smith left her longtime job cooking at Chez Panisse to

start Tomales Bay Foods, a grocery and distribution business in

Point Reyes Station whence came Cowgirl Creamery.

Keith Adams had a thriving bagel shop in Mankato, Minn., where

he started Alemar in 2008, which makes the award-winning soft

cheese Bent River. Adams’ business partner and friend Rob Hunter

has had a long career as a winemaker, including stints at Groth,

Keenan, Markham, Schramsberg and Sterling. In 2017, Adams

moved to Sebastopol to start Wm. Cofield Cheese, with Hunter as

partner. They make the clothbound cheddars McKinley, which ages

six months, and Big McK, which reaches a lustrous pale gold color,

rich texture and complex flavor with up to 15 months’ aging. In-

spired by Stilton, Cofield’s Bodega Blue brims with personality.

Recently, big companies with deep pockets have purchased some

of the pioneers, so far underwriting better facilities to improve

The market expanded in the 1990s, when, as periodic oversup-

plies and price crashes buffeted California’s fluid-milk industry,

dairy farms started to focus on cheese. Cowgirl Creamery, started

in 1997 as a retail shop and distributor selling cheeses from else-

where, was central to the movement.

“Northern California is the best market for wine and specialty

food, especially natural foods, in the U.S.,” says Sue Conley, who

founded Cowgirl with business partner Peggy Smith. “When we

started our company, it was intentional that we try to establish our

region as an appellation for cheesemaking. We have really good

dairies. That’s historic. That’s the baseline. These guys are all re-

ally good farmers.”

Conley and Smith created the American classics Mt. Tam and

Red Hawk using organic milk from their neighbor Straus Family

Dairy. Their classes for dairy farmers preached cheese as the answer

to milk’s economic roller-coaster.

Among the first to follow Cowgirl’s lead was Point Reyes Farm-

stead Cheese, a business started by the daughters of Bob and Dean

Giacomini, whose 720-acre dairy farm overlooks Tomales Bay. Rob

and Dean would have sold the farm, but their daughters, whom

they encouraged to go to college and explore other careers, came

back in 2000 to take the business into the cheese world.

“The timing was right for three of the four of us,” says Jill Giaco-

mini Basch, the youngest of the sisters and now chief marketing of-

ficer for Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese. “We were starting families.

I was in tech in Silicon Valley and wasn’t sure if I could even get back

into that after being a mom.” Today, all four sisters are involved.

Peggy Smith and Sue Conley of Cowgirl Creamery

Nicasio Valley

Cheese Company

Achadinha

Cheese

Company

Vella

Cheese

Company

Joe Matos

Cheese Factory

Wm.

Cofield

Cheese

Makers

Freestone

Artisan

Cheese

Ramini

Mozzarella

Tomales

Farmstead

Creamery

Cowgirl

Creamery

Point Reyes

Farmstead Cheese

Company

POINT REYES

NATIONAL

SEASHORE

San

Pablo

Bay

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Pacific
Ocean
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SANTA
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PETALUMA
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0 miles 10