California Cheese

California's Artisan Cheese Movement

Most of what Americans thought of as great American cheese was, until the 1980s, made by following European recipes and hoping for the best. California changed that. Mary Keehn started Cypress Grove in Arcata in 1983 with a small herd of dairy goats and the idea that American cheese could have its own identity rather than imitate French chèvre. The cheese she eventually created there, Humboldt Fog, became the most influential American cheese of the modern era. A decade later, Sue Conley and Peggy Smith founded Cowgirl Creamery in Point Reyes Station. The two were college friends who had spent years in Bay Area kitchens — Peggy with seventeen years at Chez Panisse — and they brought a chef's sensibility to cheesemaking, working with organic milk from neighboring dairies to make triple-cream and washed-rind cheeses that became Marin and Sonoma standards. Fiscalini Farmstead in Modesto, run by the third generation of an Italian-American dairy family, took the English farmhouse cheddar tradition and won Best of Show at the American Cheese Society competition with their bandage-wrapped wheels — the first farmstead cheese ever to do so.

The conditions that made California a serious cheese region are still in place. Coastal fog and steady cool temperatures along the Marin and Sonoma headlands, the Humboldt County coastline, and the Central Coast support pasture grazing nearly year-round, which gives the milk a depth and floral character that comes through in the finished cheese — the kind of place-on-the-tongue effect French cheesemakers call terroir. The Bay Area's farm-to-table restaurant culture, anchored by places like Chez Panisse and the San Francisco Ferry Building marketplace, gave the early producers a sophisticated audience, and the wine country gave them retail outlets and customers who already understood how to taste for craft and origin. Many of the cheeses we carry here are also classified as farmstead, meaning they are made on the same farm where the milk is produced — a designation that matters because farmstead cheese cannot be scaled industrially and depends on a single herd's milk to keep its character intact.

The California Producers We Carry

Cypress Grove is the goat's milk specialist in the group, founded by Mary Keehn in Arcata in Humboldt County in 1983. The signature is Humboldt Fog — a soft-ripened goat's milk wheel with a distinctive ribbon of edible vegetable ash running horizontally through the paste and along the rind, named for the Pacific fog that rolls into Humboldt County most mornings. Its flavor reads as buttermilk and fresh cream with floral notes, herbaceous overtones, and a clean citrus finish; the paste is bright and tangy at the center and develops a richer creamline just under the rind as the wheel ages. Purple Haze is a fresh chèvre flavored with lavender buds and wild-harvested fennel pollen — sweet and floral, the kind of cheese that pairs naturally with honey and almonds. Truffle Tremor is soft-ripened goat's milk infused with real black truffles, earthy and rich, with a paste that softens toward the rind. Midnight Moon is their aged goat's-milk Gouda-style, firm and caramel-sweet with the nutty character of long aging and none of the sharpness goat cheese is often expected to carry. The full range is on the Cypress Grove collection.

Cowgirl Creamery in Point Reyes Station was founded in the late 1990s by Sue Conley and Peggy Smith, both veterans of the Bay Area food scene — Peggy spent seventeen years at Chez Panisse before starting the creamery, and the influence of Alice Waters' cooking shows up in how Cowgirl thinks about ingredients and seasonality. Their cheeses are made with organic milk from the neighboring Straus Family Creamery, and the two signatures are Mt. Tam and Red Hawk. Mt. Tam is a triple-cream cow's milk wheel with a soft white bloomy rind, named for Mount Tamalpais, with a flavor that reads as cultured butter and fresh cream with hints of white mushroom from the rind. Red Hawk is the more assertive of the two — a triple-cream washed-rind cheese with a sunset-orange exterior, pungent on the nose and rich and smooth on the palate. The wild bacteria that give Red Hawk its character are native to Point Reyes; the cheese cannot be made anywhere else, which is the cleanest example of cheese terroir American dairy has produced.

Fiscalini Farmstead in Modesto is the cheddar specialist, run by the third generation of an Italian-American dairy family that has been working the same Central Valley land since the 1910s. Their bandage-wrapped 18-month cheddar follows the traditional English clothbound style — made from raw milk on the family's own farm, pressed into cylinder form, wrapped in muslin cloth, and aged in their cellars. The texture is firm and slightly crumbly, the flavor sharp and concentrated, with the mineral character that comes from cellar aging and the slightly sweet, grassy note that distinguishes Central Valley milk. The cheese won Best of Show at the American Cheese Society competition — the first farmstead cheese ever to take the top prize, which the industry treated as the moment American farmstead cheddar arrived as a peer to the English originals.

Two smaller California producers round out the selection. Karoun, a family business in Sun Valley making Armenian-style string cheese, feta, and paneer, brings the Mediterranean-style fresh cheeses that have been part of California's immigrant dairy tradition for decades. Yanni, based in the Central Valley, makes feta and other fresh cheeses suited to grilling and salads. Both fill the everyday-table role on a California board that the aged and bloomy-rind cheeses don't.

How to Build a California Cheese Board

A California cheese board works best when it draws from the three main producers in different roles. A Humboldt Fog or Truffle Tremor from Cypress Grove gives the board its soft-ripened, goat's-milk anchor — bright and tangy, with the soft creamline that develops near the rind. A Mt. Tam or Red Hawk from Cowgirl Creamery gives it the rich, cow's-milk triple-cream center — buttery and full-bodied, the cheese most guests will reach for first. A wedge of Fiscalini's aged cheddar gives it the firm, sharp finish — the cheese that holds up to a glass of red wine and pairs with apple or fig jam. Three cheeses, three milks (goat, cow, cow), three textures (soft-ripened, triple-cream, firm-aged) — the formula a serious cheese board follows.

Pair the board with what California also produces well: local honey, Marcona almonds, dried apricots, and a sourdough cracker. The wine moves are the strong ones — a Russian River Pinot Noir against the Cowgirl cheeses, a Sonoma Chardonnay with the Humboldt Fog, a Napa Cabernet against the aged Fiscalini cheddar. For the board itself, our cheese boards and utensils collection covers the wood and marble surfaces, knives, and serving tools, and our cheese assortments collection brings together selections already chosen to work across milk types, textures, and ages.