Cowgirl Creamery: Hand-Crafted San Francisco Cheese

[Customer] It's so fantastic because

it's a triple cream, you just want

to bathe in it, it's unbelievable.

(guitar strumming)

[Sue] We started Cowgirl Creamery in Point Reyes Station

to showcase the milk from Albert Straus's dairy.

His mother, Ellen, taught us a little bit about

cheese making and our name, Cowgirl Creamery

came from a couple of cowgirls hitchin'

their horses across the street.

Ellen said, You know, this place

is the wild West out here.

And I said, I know, so we must be cowgirls, right?

I'm Peg Smith.

And I'm Sue Conley from Cowgirl Creamery.

We make cheese.

We're located in Point Reyes Station, right at

the base of the Tomales Bay.

This area has a lot of dairies around it

that were founded during the Gold Rush.

[Sue] The most challenging thing was really finding

a high-quality, consistently delicious milk.

So we were lucky we had the Straus family to work with,

and now we have Bivalve Dairy, which is

three miles from this creamery and has

a very rich, high in protein,

high in butter fat, grass-fed milk.

Milk is the most complicated ingredient

that you could ever work with.

There's so much going on: The seasonality of the milk,

what the animals are eating, the breed, even the weather

changes the time the curds take to set.

It takes some time to figure out

the best way to make a specific cheese.

[Sue] The Red Hawk was a mistake in the cheese room.

Our friend and cheesemonger Kate Arding

brought in some Stilton.

Stilton has those little holes in the rind

that are created by cheese mites.

The mites jumped off the Stilton onto my Mt. Tam.

And that retarded the growth of the white mold.

Instead, this red bacteria grew, called bacterium linen.

I was so distressed I just threw

those back in the ageing room.

Two weeks later, Kate had the nerve to

cut into one and taste it.

And said, Sue, this is the best cheese you've ever made.

And in 2003, we won Best Cheese Made in America.

So, that was our lucky mistake.

One thing we found in France, especially, is it's

kind of intimidating to go into a cheese shop.

You shouldn't touch anything, and you

shouldn't ask too many questions.

So, we tried to change that at our shop in San Francisco.

We want you to touch the cheese, we want

you to taste it, we want you to try everything.

[Peggy] The Mt. Tam is a triple-crème cheese,

which means that we add cream to it.

[Sue] It has a soft, mushroom flavor.

It does develop some nuttiness and still has a lemony tang.

And then we do the seasonal cheeses, and with each

season we have a different rind treatment.

[Peggy] It really does have a flavor of stewed artichoke

or asparagus, but the flavor is really in the milk.

[Sue] Cheese is not a fancy food, it's like the original

soul food, so we want people to

come in and have a good time.

(crunch)

It's creamy, maybe a little bit

of nuttiness in it. It's delicious.

Peggy and I have worked every part of this business.

We have driven the truck, we have worked the

farmer's market, we've made the cheese, we've

made the sandwich, so, it brings me

great satisfaction to see it all working together.

It's pretty neat, what we do.

Yeah.

My favorite cheese is Red Hawk. What's yours?

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