Cowgirl Creamery Tour
In April 2009, CUESA led a tour of Cowgirl Creamery, a small, sustainable Petaluma-based business. After an inspiring day of listening, looking and learning, we filled our bellies with oven-baked Cowgirl cheese sandwiches.
Cowgirl's new facility is in an area of Petaluma that Sue Conley says is an up-and-coming sustainable food district.
Three Twins Ice Cream will soon be sharing the facility with Cowgirl -- a great thing for both businesses, since they can get combined shipments of Straus milk.
Sue Conley (pictured) founded Cowgirl in 1997 with Peggy Smith. The pair are affectionately referred to as "the cowgirls" by fans and cheese lovers alike.
Cowgirl gets all their milk form the Straus home ranch ("like an estate wine," says Sue Conley), which has allowed the cheese makers to learn the qualities of the milk well.
Sue Conley talked about the beginnings of the sustainable food movement in Marin and how Cowgirl's business took shape in Pt. Reyes.
Cowgirl's Petaluma creamery was built to allow groups to view the cheesemaking process.
After the milk is cultured, it gets drained into these white forms (like big cupcake tins), where the curd settles and the whey drains off.
In their new facility, Cowgirl can pasteurize 800 gallons of Straus milk all at once. It takes 12 hours to pasteurize. It's a slow pasteurization, which does not disrupt the structure of the milk.
The fresh cheese has been soaked in brine for 24 hours. Cowgirl uses the same brine they've had since the start, a fact that might account for the fact that many French cheese lovers say their cheese tastes like it comes from raw milk.
The cheese ages at 50 degrees in 90-95% humidity -- the perfect environment for growing white mold.
Eric Patterson is one of the cheesemakers at Cowgirl Creamery. He has his own goat farm and started working at Cowgirl because of an interest in starting his own cheese-making operation. But, he says, he's found Cowgirl to be a really great place to work -- so he's stayed!
Eric, one of the cheesemakers, said he'd seen the company make 2.5 million cheeses...before he lost count.
Eric offered the group to opportunity to taste their Mt. Tam cheese at various stages of the aging process. The cheese on the right is only 24 hours old, whereas the one on the left has aged for over 2 weeks.
The fresh cheese had a mild curd-like quality, while the aged cheeses were progressively creamier and stronger in flavor.
St. Pat is one of Cowgirl's two seasonal cheeses. The rind takes on a greenish color because it is wrapped in wild nettles through the aging process.
Cowgirl makes most of their cheeses in new Petaluma facility, but they continue to make Red Hawk at their original Pt. Reyes facility because the cheese's distinct red mold is plentiful in the air there.
Tour participants taste cheese as a warm-up for their grilled cheese sandwiches!
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CUESA (Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture) is dedicated to growing thriving communities through the power and joy of local food. Learn More »