Holstein cows grazing on green pasture, generic stock photo standing in for the farm. Photo by wernerdetjen via Pixabay.
On a 720-acre stretch of pasture overlooking Tomales Bay, three sisters transformed their family’s dairy into one of California’s most decorated cheese companies. This spring, Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Co. added two more trophies to its case: a gold medal at the world’s largest cheese competition and a 2026 Good Food Award, both for the same wheel of blue cheese. Here’s the story behind Fennel Blue, the farm that makes it, and the family that’s been doing this since 2000.
A Family Farm on Tomales Bay
The Giacomini family has farmed this stretch of Marin County for generations, long before anyone on the ranch had heard of artisan cheese. Bob Giacomini’s grandfather, Tobias, left northern Italy in 1904 to farm in California. In 1959, Bob and his wife, Dean, bought a 720-acre dairy on Tomales Bay, an hour north of San Francisco, starting with a herd of about 125 cows. Over the next three decades, Bob grew that herd to more than 500 cows, and the farm earned a reputation for excellent milk. But by the mid-1990s, a herd that size was putting real strain on the land, the water, and the small crew running the place.
The fix came from an unlikely direction: the family’s three daughters, Lynn, Jill, and Diana, none of whom had planned careers in dairy. As the family likes to put it, when life gives you four daughters, you make cheese. None of the sisters had cheesemaking training, so they consulted chefs, shopkeepers, and industry veterans to decide what to make. The answer kept coming back to blue cheese, since no one in California was making a true farmstead version at the time. They hired an experienced cheesemaker from Maytag Dairy Farms in Iowa, and in August 2000 the family produced its first vat of Original Blue, a raw milk, rindless cheese that became the state’s first farmstead blue. Twenty-six years later, Point Reyes Farmstead is 100% women-owned and in its fourth generation of family farming.
That legacy earned recognition of its own this year. At the Summer Fancy Food Show in June, the Specialty Food Association inducted co-owner Jill Giacomini Basch into its 2026 Hall of Fame, alongside lifetime achievement honors for Sue Conley and Peggy Smith of nearby Cowgirl Creamery, another Marin County name that helped put California artisan cheese on the map. For a company that started with no cheesemaking experience among its founders, it’s a fitting marker of how far the farm has come.
From Milk to Wheel: The Craft Behind the Blue
Every cheese the family makes still starts with the same closed herd: about 400 Holstein cows that graze on pastures overlooking Tomales Bay, where coastal fog and salty Pacific air settle over the grass most mornings. Keeping the herd closed, meaning new genetics enter only through carefully chosen breeding rather than by bringing in outside animals, is part of how the farm protects the consistency of its milk from season to season.
Original Blue, the cheese that started it all, is still made from raw milk and vegetarian rennet, then aged about three and a half months with no rind at all. That raw-milk choice sits at the center of a debate we’ve explored before in our guide to raw milk vs. pasteurized milk in cheesemaking, and Point Reyes is a good real-world example of a farmstead that deliberately uses both approaches. Bay Blue, introduced in 2012, takes the opposite path: pasteurized milk, traditional rennet, and a natural rind, aged around 90 days into a fudgy, Stilton-inspired wheel with a mellow, salted-caramel finish designed to win over people who think they don’t like blue cheese. Fennel Blue, the newest member of the family, builds directly on Bay Blue’s base and folds in aromatic fennel seed, landing somewhere between mild blue pungency, umami richness, and a faint anise-like sweetness.
None of this happens without real investment in the land beneath it. The Giacominis have installed robotic milking equipment that lets cows be milked on their own schedule, added a methane digester that now supplies a meaningful share of the farm’s power, and sold a conservation easement to the Marin Agricultural Land Trust to permanently protect the property. They’ve also deliberately kept the herd smaller than it was in the 1990s, choosing quality and land health over sheer volume.
Two Medals, One Big Year
This spring, that approach paid off on two very different stages. In early March, Point Reyes entered the World Championship Cheese Contest, hosted every two years by the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association since 1957 and widely considered the largest technical dairy evaluation in the world. Over three days at Madison’s Monona Terrace, 56 judges from 22 countries worked through 3,375 entries from 24 countries and 33 U.S. states. Fennel Blue took the Best of Class gold medal in the Open Class Cheese with Blue Molding category, and Bay Blue picked up a bronze in Blue Veined Cheese with Exterior Molding.
Head Cheesemaker and VP of Operations Kuba Hemmerling, who has led the creamery since 2009 and introduced both Toma and Bay Blue to the lineup, credited the whole team rather than any single recipe, calling the cheeses “labors of love” crafted with intention every day.
Then in June came a second honor: a 2026 Good Food Award for Fennel Blue, one of the most respected honors in American artisan food. Now in its 16th year, the award relies on blind tastings by more than 250 category-specific judges, who score products on flavor, craftsmanship, and sustainable production. Fennel Blue was among 242 winning products chosen from more than 1,200 entries nationwide, and the win was celebrated at a New York ceremony on June 27, timed to coincide with the Summer Fancy Food Show. National Sales Director Connie Concon tied the win to the company’s everyday philosophy, noting that something award-winning can still feel approachable enough for a Tuesday night, not just a special occasion.
For a mid-sized, family-run creamery, back-to-back wins like these do more than look good on a label. A gold medal from the world’s largest technical dairy competition tells retail buyers and distributors that the cheese meets an exacting bar for craftsmanship, while a Good Food Award signals something a little different to consumers: that the product was also made responsibly, not just skillfully. Landing both, for the same cheese, in the same year, is the kind of validation that helps a small producer earn shelf space next to far larger brands.
Tasting Fennel Blue: How to Bring It Home
If you haven’t tried it yet, Fennel Blue is a good entry point even if blue cheese has intimidated you in the past. Expect a milder blue pungency than something like Roquefort, balanced by savory, umami depth and a faint sweetness from the fennel that leans almost licorice-like. It holds up well on a cheese board, crumbles nicely over a salad, and melts smoothly into a warm pasta dish if you want to use it as more than a garnish.
Since Fennel Blue is built on the same base as Bay Blue, it’s a fair bet that it pairs well the same way: a glass of vintage port or a full-bodied red alongside dried fruit brings out the caramel and umami notes without fighting the fennel. If you want to go deeper into the style before you shop, our guide to blue cheese flavors and textures is a good place to start, especially if you’re trying to figure out where a milder wheel like this one fit next to something sharper.
It’s also worth remembering that a cheese doesn’t need a dramatic occasion to be worth serving. Point Reyes has leaned into that idea themselves, describing their whole line as built for everyday indulgence rather than special-occasion cheese board duty only. A wedge of Fennel Blue tucked into a weeknight grilled cheese, or set out with crackers while you cook dinner, works just as well as it would at a holiday gathering. That’s arguably the more useful lesson from a company that just won two of the industry’s biggest awards: the cheese that impresses a panel of expert judges can still be the same cheese you reach for on a random Tuesday.
A Small Farm’s Big Year
What makes Point Reyes Farmstead worth following isn’t just the medal count, though there’s plenty of that. It’s that the same family decision from 2000, to scale the dairy down to something smaller and more deliberate, is still paying off a quarter-century later, one award-winning wheel at a time. If you want to see what’s coming out of the creamery next, Point Reyes shares regular updates on Instagram, and we’ll keep tracking their wins here on Nahitra as they happen. In the meantime, track down a wedge of Fennel Blue and see what a gold medal actually tastes like.
