{"id":4413,"date":"2012-02-27T11:49:09","date_gmt":"2012-02-27T19:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/?p=4413"},"modified":"2012-09-27T23:11:38","modified_gmt":"2012-09-28T06:11:38","slug":"kickin-the-cheese-can-at-california-artisan-cheese-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/kickin-the-cheese-can-at-california-artisan-cheese-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Kickin&#8217; the Cheese Can at California Artisan Cheese Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"img\" src=\"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/images\/cheeses2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"922\" height=\"456\" \/><\/p>\n<p>America has come a long way since the days of time-saving 20th Century inventions such as Cheese Whiz, Velveeta and Easy Cheese spray in a can. You can still buy cheesy Kraft products but why bother? The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/festivals\/petaluma-cheese-festival.html\"><strong>6th Annual California Artisan Cheese Festival<\/strong><\/a> features artisan, hand-crafted (and often organic) cheeses&#8211;some of the finest int he world! Event is held March 23-25, 2012, with tours throughout the region (Sonoma County) and\u00a0 Cheese Festival Tasting on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets:\u00a0\u00a0 artisancheesefestival.com<\/p>\n<p>REAL CHEESE lovers searching for the sharpest, smoothest and tastiest cheeses, need to lock down the dates for this year&#8217;s California Artisan Cheese Festival in Petaluma. A weekend of culinary exploring has quite a line up of participant vendors. Artisan cheese producers expected to attend include <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/farms\/cheese-awards2011.html\">American Cheese Society award-winners<\/a> such as Cowgirl Creamery, Nicasio Valley and Point Reyes Valley Farmstead.<\/p>\n<p>One of the best elements of the cheese festival in Petaluma is the farm tours where a bus picks you up from your hotel and drives you around to visit some of the top cheesemakers at their farms and facilities. Below is a small sampling of the tour options at the event, each sold in separate ticketed pricing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2012 Tour Highlights:<\/strong> <!--StyleSheet Link--><!--StyleSheet Link--><!--StyleSheet Link--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Sheep, Cows &amp; Water Buffalo tour at Bellwether Farms where the Callahan family produces sheep and cow&#8217;s milk cheese.<\/li>\n<li><!--StyleSheet Link--><!--StyleSheet Link--><!--StyleSheet Link-->Bianchi-Moreda ranch, home to 5th generation family farm where 400 Jersey cows are milked daily and cheese is made at Valley Ford Cheese Company.<\/li>\n<li><!--StyleSheet Link--><!--StyleSheet Link--><!--StyleSheet Link-->Nicasio Valley Cheese Company &#8211; Lafranchi family&#8217;s organic, farmstead dairy and creamery since 1919.\u00a0 You&#8217;ll see milking of 400 cows and creating the cheeses of their Italian-\u00ad Swiss ancestors.<\/li>\n<li><!--StyleSheet Link--><!--StyleSheet Link--><!--StyleSheet Link-->Baringa Ranch in Marshall &#8211; Marcia Barinaga carries on the sheepherding and cheesemaking traditions of her Basque ancestors on over 100 acres overlooking beautiful Tomales Bay where she makes farmstead sheep&#8217;s milk cheese.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>California is 2nd just under Wisconsin in cheese production, and the state&#8217;s artisan cheesemakers have heads nodding, winning international cheese competitions.\u00a0 Since the region surrounding Petaluma also has award-winning wines in Sonoma &amp; Napa Counties, you can make the trip a double-header, sampling and picking up crafted wines, as wells.<\/p>\n<p>At Petalauma&#8217;s cheese festival, in addition to cheese, wines will be poured and a variety of restaurants and other products and samples should make this cheese lover&#8217;s paradise one of your best bets for finding gourmet products to make you smile and say cheese!<\/p>\n<p>Other great events in Petaluma include <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/festivals\/petaluma-butter-eggs-festival.html\">Butter &amp; Eggs Days Festival and Parade<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>America has come a long way since the days of time-saving 20th Century inventions such as Cheese Whiz, Velveeta and Easy Cheese spray in a can. You can still buy cheesy Kraft products but why bother? The 6th Annual California Artisan Cheese Festival features artisan, hand-crafted (and often organic) cheeses&#8211;some of the finest int he [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4413"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.seecalifornia.com\/traveltips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}