Sue Conley and Peg Smith

Red Hawk, Chimney Rock, and Devil’s Gulch sound straight out of an old Western movie, but they happen to be bestselling aged cheeses produced in Northern California.

Cowgirl Creamery’s co-founders, Sue Conley and Peggy Smith, are pioneers but not exactly cowgirls. They met at the University of Tennessee and have been integral to the Bay Area farm-to-table food scene for decades. In Berkeley, Conley co-owned and cooked at Bette’s Oceanview Diner while Smith was in the kitchen at Chez Panisse for 17 years. From those experiences, they forged bonds with local farmers and dairy suppliers.

None has turned out to be more important than Ellen Straus, the matriarch of Marin County’s Straus Family Creamery, which led the organic milk movement in the U.S. in the 1970s. It was Straus who one day observed a young woman hitching her horse to a post in front of the bank in tiny Point Reyes Station, an hour north of San Francisco, and told Conley and Smith, “We’re living in the Wild West out here.”

Conley countered, “Then we must be cowgirls! And this must be the Cowgirl Creamery.”

In the early 1990s, Conley and Smith had launched Tomales Bay Foods, a marketing company designed to help local farms and dairies connect with the Bay Area’s top restaurants. Then they started making fresh cheese in their renovated hay barn, sourcing the milk from Straus Family Creamery, of course. Inspiration also came from their travels to France and England and friendly relationships with Neal’s Yard Dairy in London and Jean d’Alos in Bordeaux.

Cowgirl Creamery cheeses are sold at their shop in San Francisco’s Ferry Building and hundreds of outlets across the country, winning dozens of awards. Conley and Smith have also published a cookbook, “Cowgirl Creamery Cooks,” that 
shares their cheese wisdom and favorite 75 recipes for cooking with cheese.--Julie Besonen