california

Cowgirl Creamery is known for being one of the first organic cheese producers in the United States. They’ve been at it for 16 years now.

Every Wednesday during the spring and summer, Cowgirl Creamery offers a one hour tour of their Petaluma facility. The Petaluma creamery opened in 2008 and is where all of their cheeses except for their Redhawk is produced. (The Redhawk is produced in Pt. Reyes where the particular variety of mold used to turn the rind red is native and naturally occurring in the air.)

The tour started with a 10 minute history of dairy farming in California and the Cowgirl Creamery. Did you know that dairy farming got started in the area during the gold rush and that their butter sold for the same price in the 1850s as it does now?

That was followed by a demonstration of how cheese is made. First, the enzyme Rennet breaks down the proteins in milk and turns it to a gelatinous semi-solid. Then, the semi-solid is placed into molds where most of the liquid drains away making it much more solid.

Then it was on to the tour. Even though this was their larger facility, the creamery was only a couple thousand square feet. The first room we saw was where the milk becomes cheese. We saw how the raw milk is pasteurized, turned to curds, placed into molds, and then removed from the molds, brined, and placed on drying racks. The second room was the drying room where we saw and tasted their Mt. Tam cheese at the one day, one week, and two week phases (it’s finished aging at about four weeks). The third room we saw was the packaging room where the cheeses are wrapped for resale (and then we got to taste a few varieties of their finshed cheese).

This was one of the best tours I’ve ever been on because it was extremely educational and I love tasting the product as it goes through the production process.

Tours take place Wednesdays at 11:30am and cost $30. The price includes a cheese sampler (we each got two full size cheeses in a little soft sided cooler; those cheeses run about $15 each at Whole Foods so if your interested in going on the tour it easily pays for itself in cheese). Tours must be booked online in advance.

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