Everyone loves cheese and we're no exception. Olives offers a variety of cheeses from all around the country to around the globe. Some of the best cheeses we have found are from right here in California. Cowgirl Creamery ( producers of MT TAM and Red Hawk) and Cypress Grove (producers of Humbolt Fog and Truflle Tremor) are two "local" creameries that produce outstanding cheeses.
COWGIRL CREAMERY:
For over a decade, furthering the fine art of farmstead cheesemaking...
In 1997, Sue Conley and Peggy Smith opened Cowgirl Creamery in Pt. Reyes Station, a picturesque postage-stamp-of-a-town on the coast about an hour north of San Francisco. They started with an old barn, made it beautiful, put in a small plant for making hand-crafted cheese, bought organic milk from the neighbor, Straus Family Creamery... and before long the world found them! From the beginning, they wanted to make delicious, artisan cheese, to be environmentally responsible, and they also wanted to support their cheesemaking friends in being sustainable land stewards. Today, Cowgirl Creamery continues to make just a small collection of cheese -- four, soft aged and three fresh, totaling about 3,000 pounds per week. However, their circle of cheesemaking friends has grown like wildfire and they now distribute extraordinary artisan cheeses from over 200 of America's and Europe's most prized producers.
Two of our customers favorites cheeses from Cowgirl Creamery are
MT TAM and Red Hawk
MT TAM
Just North of the San Francisco Bay, Mt. Tamalpais rises like a monument to Northern California's natural beauty. In deference, Cowgirl Creamery named its signature cheese MT TAM. It's a smooth, creamy, elegant, 10-oz, triple-cream - made with tasty organic milk from the Straus Family Dairy. MT TAM is firm, yet buttery with a mellow, earthy flavor reminiscent of white mushrooms. MT TAM won 1st Prize in the soft-ripened category at this year’s American Cheese Society competition.
Red Hawk
Cowgirl Creamery captures the essence of West Marin with its Red Hawk, a triple-cream, washed-rind, fully-flavored cheese made from organic cow's milk from the Straus Family Dairy. Aged six weeks and washed with a brine solution that promotes the growth of a bacteria that tints the rind a sunset red-orange, Red Hawk won Best-In-Show at the American Cheese Society's Annual Conference in 2003.
To learn about Cowgirl Creamery and their cheese making to go to
Cypress Grove
Can you imagine a time when goat cheese wasn’t popular in the United States? It seems difficult to believe, but a mere twenty-five years ago virtually all the goat cheese sold in the United States was imported from Europe. And that’s where our story begins, with a few enterprising Americans — mostly women — who made small batches of goat cheese in their kitchens and began selling it to discerning restaurant owners and retailers. One of those enterprising Americans was Mary Keehn, and that’s where the story of Cypress Grove begins...
... And so, armed with her kitchen stove and a knack for inventing unique and
delicious recipes, Mary began dabbling with cheese making. It soon became
clear that selective goat breeding was only one of Mary’s many talents; she
had a natural flair for cheese making as well. Thus in 1983 with the help of family
and friends, Mary made the move from kitchen hobbyist to cheese making
entrepreneur…From the outset, Mary strove to make the highest quality, best-tasting artisanal cheeses. Market acceptance, however, was slow. Americans, it seemed, had become accustomed not only to the strong, tangy goat cheeses made in France...
Today, renowned for its innovative range of fresh, aged and ripened cheeses — many invented by Mary — and internationally awarded for excellence, Cypress Grove is a leader in the domestic goat cheese market.
Olives carries many of the Cypress Grove cheeses but tow are especially popular
Humbolt Fog and then it's a toss up between Truffle Tremor and Mignight Moon.
Humboldt Fog®
Our signature offering, Humboldt Fog® is an elegant, soft, surface ripened cheese. The texture is creamy and luscious with a subtle tangy flavor. Each handcrafted wheel features a ribbon of edible vegetable ash along its center and a coating of ash under its exterior to give it a distinctive, cake-like appearance. An American Original!
Truffle Tremor™
The classic flavor of truffle meets the velvety perfection of ripened goat milk cheese. Earthy, elegant, and sophisticated, it's sure to make even the most distinguished taste buds shake!
Midnight Moon™
Aged six months or more, this pale, ivory cheese is firm, dense and smooth with the slight graininess of a long-aged cheese. The flavor is nutty and brown-buttery, with prominent caramel notes. The wheel is finished in a beautiful black wax. Made in Europe exclusively for Cypress Grove Chevre.
To learn more about Cypress Grove cheese go to
One of the other favorite cheeses Olives features is Ossau Iraty
(oh-soh ee-RAH-tee)Ossau Iraty Pardou Arriou is a classic sheep's milk cheese made in
the French Pyrenées in two neighboring provinces: the Ossau Valley in the
Bearn and the wooded hills of Iraty in the French Basque country. Ossau Iraty is made with the milk of the Manech and Basco-Bearnaise ewes. While it complies with strict Appelation d'Origine Controlée (AOC) regulations, the shape of each wheel can vary from region to region. Ossau is aged for a minimum of ninety days; we age it further in the Artisanal Premium Cheese caves until its paste has turned a luscious ivory, its fragrance is reminiscent of toasted hazelnuts, and its taste encapsulates the sweet, buttery flavors that a great sheep's milk cheese can deliver. Pair this cheese with Zinfandel.
