Three sisters in the Giacomini family are proudly at the helm of the Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company, on a lush stretch of land on the California coast overlooking Tomales Bay, a beautiful inlet from the Pacific Ocean. “100% women-owned. We are dairy farmers and artisans, delivering happiness through cheese,” proclaims the bio on their Instagram profile.
The journey of this family business dates back to 1904, when the sisters’ great grandfather, Tobia Giacomini, left Villa di Chiavenna in Lombardy, on the Italian border with Switzerland, to farm the fabled, fertile lands of California.
Blue cheese from Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Co.
“This region—all the way from the Pacific Ocean east to the wine country of the Sonoma Valley—has a very strong dairy history, but specifically by Italians and Swiss who immigrated here because of the similar climate and geography to that Northern Italian and Southern Switzerland region,” explains Jill Giacomini Basch, Chief Marketing Officer and co-CEO of Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Co. with her sisters Diana and Lynn.
Their parents purchased their dairy farm on Tomales Bay in 1959 and established a reputation for producing the very highest quality milk, which they sold to the local creamery. Jill and her sisters went on to pursue independent careers in various sectors of business, but in the late 1990s, when their parents were starting to consider retirement and what that would look like, the sisters decided to combine forces and transition the family business into an artisan farmstead cheesemaking facility.
“We realized in order for the business to be sustainable, we had to diversify,” explains Giacomini Basch. “We often got the side-eye, like ‘Do you know what you’re doing?’ Twenty years ago there was a lot of doubt about the girls coming back to the family farm—’You don’t know how to make cheese; you can’t build a company with one product’—and it really fortified us to be successful.
“On the agricultural side, we still face some gender bias about women in farming and agriculture, from suppliers to other farmers and people that just cast a little bit more doubt on women in that industry than they would if it were three sons coming back to the business.”
Other pioneering women in the American artisan cheese industry have lent support and encouragement, including Peggy Smith and Sue Conley of Cowgirl Creamery, Jennifer Bice at Redwood Hill Farm in Sonoma, and Mary Keehn at Cypress Grove in Humboldt County. Point Reyes’ first, and now most iconic cheese, Original Blue, California’s only classic-style blue cheese, is a beloved favorite among chefs and home cooks alike and has garnered many awards since its inception in 2000.
Bay Blue cheese from Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Co.
“It’s very creamy—almost like the texture of butter, very spreadable,” says Giacomini Basch. “It melts beautifully, it’s great in pastas, risotto, and even in desserts, like an apple galette or a pine nut tart drizzled with honey.”
In 2010, they introduced their Toma to huge critical acclaim and have continued to gradually expand the cheeses they make, including several flavored versions of Toma. TomaTruffle is infused with black truffles from Umbria, while TomaProvence is heady with a savory blend of Mediterranean herbs.
Reflecting back on the past 20 years, Giacomini Basch admits that for her and her sisters, quitting their day jobs and reinventing the family business to sustain it for the next generation was simultaneously risky, courageous, and instinctual. “Part of it was timing, part of it was lifestyle, but it also had to do with our shared love of food…we weren’t interested in raising dairy animals, but when you blend it into artisan food production, the ties and themes of our heritage were very much present in how we were raised on the farm and in the extended family, so we are really honoring and carrying forward our traditions.”