There's a working dairy farm on the Marin coast of California, about an hour north of San Francisco, right on the edge of Point Reyes National Seashore.
The Giacomini family has been farming that land since 1959. In 2000, the four daughters took over and decided to start making cheese. Not mass-produced cheese. Farmstead cheese — made on-site, from the milk of their own herd, the way it's been done for centuries.
Their Original Blue became one of the most celebrated American blue cheeses ever made. Creamy, complex, not the aggressive punch of a Roquefort — something gentler and more nuanced, made from fresh California milk a few miles from the Pacific Ocean.
You can order it directly from the farm. Original Blue, Toma, Gouda, Pimento cheese — shipped nationwide, flat rate $20 a box. No middleman, no grocery store markup, no sitting on a shelf for weeks.
This is what cheese tastes like when the people making it own the land, know the cows, and have been doing this for 25 years because they love it.
Most people have never heard of Point Reyes Farmstead. Most people are missing out.
Order a wheel. Figure out what you've been settling for.