We are now entering the cheese portion of this eating excursion. Get excited. Because you’ll notice on your drive up through Marin County that this is indeed cow country.

The Point Reyes peninsula has a long and tasty history of artisan cheesemaking. During the Gold Rush, European immigrants built dairies here to supply butter and cheese to gold miners in San Francisco. The peninsula became known as “cow heaven” and from the looks of it, not much has changed.

Just as the nutrient rich and pristine waters of Tomales Bay play an integral role in creating oysters that burst with briny, buttery sweetness, the salty Pacific breezes, cooling coastal fog, and abundant grasslands make this area prime for producing some of the best cheeses in the country. In fact, a whopping 22,000 acres of land in Marin and Sonoma are dedicated to making cheese and milk products.

700 of those acres belong to the Giacomini Family Dairy, a.k.a. the Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company, maker of one of my favorite cheeses of all time, the Point Reyes Original Blue. We arrived at the farm, and proceeded up the driveway. An unassuming, curving dirt path, we wound around and rumbled uphill, and then, as we broke the crest of the hill, the most picturesque sight greeted us. I can only describe it as a sweeping panorama of pastoral bliss. Rolling, lush, green hills, a calm pool of water, hundreds of beautiful Holstein cows lazing in the sun, grazing, gossiping about the new bull in town, you know, doing stuff happy cows do. It was cow paradise.