Last week I had the pleasure of an inside peek at Cowgirl Creamery’s cheesemaking operation on First Street in Petaluma. The original creamery is located in Point Reyes, but high demand for the drool-inducing Cowgirl cheese compelled them to open up another creamery in 2008. When I dropped in last week, they were making their newest year-round cheese, Wagon Wheel, and their seasonal spring cheese, St Pat.
Here are some snaps of the Cowgirls’ creamery on the banks of the Petaluma River, plus a few shots of the finished products and of the Cowgirls, Sue Conley and Peggy Smith, guest stars at the recent California Artisan Cheese Festival.
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- Giant mixing vats for the organic milk, with round cheese molds (the white tables in front)
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- Big round molds and cheese presses for Wagon Wheel, Cowgirl Creamery’s heavenly “everyday cheese.”
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- Laying out rounds of St Pat, pre-aged
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- Fuzzy rounds of St Pat, the seasonal spring cheese, out of the molds and ready to hang out in the aging room
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- St Pat cheeses are wrapped in organic stinging nettles that have had the stingers removed.
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- Spring and summer cheeses are thought to be the most flavorful because the cows that produced them have been munching on fresh green grass, which improves the quality of the milk.
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- Inside the refrigerated aging room.
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- Boxes of round cheeses stacked in the aging room
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- First step to artisanal cheesemaking: Pasture
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- Step 2: Breeding
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- Step 3: Cheesemaking
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- Step 4: Affinage
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- Step 5: The Cheesemonger
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- “My character can’t escape being in the cheese that I make.”
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- A big vat for the organic milk that goes into the creamery …
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- … and a vat for the whey that comes out. In the background: the Petaluma River and a Ghirardelli sign painted on a barn.
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- Delivery truck outside the creamery, the first step in the cheeses’ journey to the far corners of the world.
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- The finished products, with fabulous wines. St Pat is on the right; another seasonal cheese, Devil’s Gulch, is on the left
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- Wagon Wheel in various stages of the aging process, from youngest (right) to oldest.
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- The Cowgirls themselves, Sue Conley (left) and Peggy Smith, check out the wines paired with their cheeses at the 2010 California Artisan Cheese Festival
