Redwood Hill’s Jennifer Bice comes full circle

Although it started out as a 4-H project, Redwood Hill Farm and Creamery of Sebastopol grew to become one of the top, family-owned dairy goat creameries in the U.S., based on sales and milk volume.

So when Jennifer Bice announced in early December that she was selling the business, it took many Sonoma County residents by surprise.

Bice revealed that she was selling the creamery she founded in 1978 to Emmi, a dairy and cheese company from Switzerland. That made Redwood Hill the third major goat milk dairy brand on the North Coast to sell in the past decade.

Laura Chenel, who founded her namesake goat cheese company in Sebastopol in 1979, sold it in 2006 to the Triballat family of France, operators of the Rians Group. In 2010, Mary Keehn, founder of Cypress Grove Chevre in Arcata, also sold to Emmi.

Bice said her exit strategy was the only way to ensure that the company she built over the past 40 years would continue to make the same high-quality products, from the same milk producers, according to her original vision. She has siblings who work at the farm but no one with the expertise required to lead the company.

“I didn’t want it to die and have it be sold and done with,” said Bice, 62. “Emmi has over 100 years of dairy-making experience, and they are still owned by a cooperative of small-scale dairy farmers ... They align with our values.”

For the time being, Bice is still running the creamery as its managing director. But in a few years, she plans to retire and return to her first love: taking care of the goats.

“I’m really a farmer at heart, and I love the animals,” said Bice, who retained ownership of the 20-acre farm and her 300-some goats, each of whom she knows by name. “So I’ll be able to go full circle.”

As Bice gets ready to participate in the 10th annual Artisan Cheese Festival, March 18-20 in Petaluma, she reflected on her days as a pioneering North Coast cheese maker, before the advent of the “artisan” cheese movement.

Q: What first drew you to goats?

A: I was born in Los Angeles, and when I was 10 my parents moved us up to Sebastopol to an abandoned apple orchard. We started 4-H, and we all had different projects. But the goats became the favorites because of their engaging personality. They are really like dogs, but they give the wonderful milk. So all of us had five to eight goats, which added up to a herd. That’s when my parents decided to build the dairy and to provide goat milk in glass bottles to the new health food stores in the late 1960s.

When the younger kids didn’t want to be in 4-H, my parents decided to close the dairy. By this time, I was out of high school and working at a veterinary clinic. Then I had more and more goats, so my late husband (Steven Schack) and I decided to reopen the dairy in 1978. We started with the raw milk in glass bottles.

Q: How did your product line evolve?

A: We started with the milk and then we did yogurt, mainly because we were on a shoestring. We were able to find a yogurt plant, the Brown Cow in Petaluma, that made it into the product, and we picked it up and sold it. We were able to build a cheese plant in 1994 at our current farm.

Our first cheese was chevre (fresh goat cheese), and then we made feta, and then we went into the French-style, rind-ripened varieties, which are really our signature cheeses. The Bucheret (buttery flavor with white, bloomy rind), the Crottin (fluffy texture and earthy flavor) and Terra (larger version of Crottin) were added in the mid ‘90s to 2000. We had our own cheese plant where we could do the aging, and no one else was doing that at the time.

In 2003 we had run out of space in our own cheese plant, so that’s when we leased our current creamery location at the old apple processing plant at 116 and Occidental Road.

Q: What were the factors that helped make goat cheese more mainstream?

A: In the ‘60s and ‘70s, there wasn’t much high-end cheese here. It was Velveeta and Cheddar and Monterey Jack. But I give credit to the chefs for paving the way for goat cheese to become accepted and then more popular. Back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in Berkeley was really a trailblazer for goat cheese. The Warm Goat Cheese Salad, that was a key dish. I thought Alice Waters had invented that dish until I saw it on every menu in France.

Here in Sonoma County, a lot of the chefs were using goat cheese at these higher-end restaurants with white tablecloths. When people go and spend $50 for dinner and get served goat cheese, their attitude changed. The chefs were serving it in some delicious, exotic, unique ways, and that’s what launched it. Even to this day, goat milk cheeses are really the gateway to the other products.

Q: Most of the pioneers of goat cheese were self-taught. Was that true for you?

A: As far as the products, I would say yes. I started out in the kitchen and made yogurt and cheese and read from books. Originally, the Bible of goat cheesemaking was a small book only in French, which I translated word for word.

In those days, there weren’t any classes. There was big, industrial cheese and then goat cheese makers like Laura Chenel (in Sebastopol) and Mary Keehn (in Arcata). We all started at the same time, along with Judy Schad of Capriole in Kentucky and Allison Hooper of the Vermont Creamery. We were all named pioneers of goat cheese by the American Cheese Society.

The early pioneers were in it from the goat-owning angle. The hard part was getting information on cheesemaking, because there weren’t any artisanal producers. It was hard to get equipment. Even today, all of our cheese molds are made in France.

Q: Why do you think women were drawn to goat cheese?

A: More women were into raising goats, and it’s still that way today, partly due to the goats’ personality. By owning the animals and having the milk, that’s how they found their way into farming. Goat dairying never was, and still isn’t, accepted by mainstream farming and agriculture in this country. So because it was outside the agricultural norm, which is spearheaded by men, it was easy for women to grow in this area.

Q: Is there a particular cheese that launched your brand?

A: Our one cheese that is still most popular today is the California Crottin. The cylinder shape makes it like a French Crottin, but the mold on the outside gives it a unique, robust flavor. New York Times reporter R. W. Apple Jr. extolled the virtues of our Crottin, and that put us on the map. Later on, in an article in the Wall Street Journal, they blind-tasted a French and our California Crottin, and our cheese came out way ahead.

Q: Which goat cheese makers do you see as the emerging talents on the North Coast?

A: Erika Scharfen of Pennyroyal Farm in Boonville has a variety of cheeses, from fresh to aged. She was our cheesemaker here for several years, and she also worked in France. Another one in Petaluma is Anna Hancock of Pug’s Leap Cheese, who has a fresh and an aged goat cheese. She’s new and upcoming.

Then there’s Tamara Hicks of Tomales Farmstead Creamery in Tomales. They produced milk for us, and then they built their cheese plant. They make four cheeses, including a French-style rind-ripened one. Seana Doughty of Bleating Heart in Tomales makes primarily sheep, cow and mixed milk cheeses, and she’s not into goat too much, but she could be a real leader in the cheese industry.

Q: What was the impetus for your sale to Emmi?

A: Anyone who has been in farming knows how hard it is. It’s day in, day out, weekends, holidays. And my business has grown so much. Of course, I’m attached to it, after my parents started it and I did it all these years. But I am in my 60s, and someday I want to retire.

So I started researching and going to seminars. It was a multi-year project. What I didn’t want was to sell to the highest bidder and have it be a corporate entity. That would create a shell of a company left here. Then I entered into discussion with Emmi. I went to Switzerland to see their operations, and they have incredible animal welfare, and they treat their people well. They make great cheese.

Most importantly, they encouraged us to maintain the way we do business here. I’m staying on for several years, so basically, everything is going on as we built it. They said, “Whatever expertise you need, let us know.”

“Our farm tours in the spring will still happen at the farm, and they’ve even allowed us to keep the name, Redwood Hill Farm.”

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The buttery-rich Bucheret tops this simple salad with a fresh apple cider-based vinaigrette in this recipe, developed by Sheana Davis.

Redwood Hill Farm Bucheret and Spinach Salad

Makes 3 to 4 servings

1 Bucheret cheese, cut into small pieces

1 pound fresh spinach, rinsed and dried

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

1/2 cup olive oil

1 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon thyme, chopped

- Sea salt and fresh ground pepper, to taste

Whisk together the apple cider vinegar, olive oil, honey, thyme, salt and pepper.

Place spinach in a serving bowl, sprinkle with Bucheret and drizzle with the vinaigrette.

Serve with a Lagunitas ale or a Riesling.

Staff writer Diane Peterson can be reached at 521-5287 or diane.peterson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @dianepete56.