California Artisan Cheese Festival

For three days each spring, California's artisan cheese world gathers in Sonoma County. Farm and producer tours head out to dairies and creameries, seminars and pairing workshops fill the middle of the weekend, and a Cheese Crawl winds through the makers and shops of The Barlow in Sebastopol.

It all builds to the Artisan Cheese Tasting & Marketplace at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa, where more than a hundred cheesemakers, winemakers, brewers and food artisans sample and sell. The California Artisan Cheese Guild produces the festival.

Few food festivals put you this close to the people doing the work. The tours go behind the scenes at working farms and creameries to show how cheese is made and aged, and the marketplace is a chance to meet California cheesemakers face to face and talk milk, rinds and pairings.

It draws cheese lovers from across the country, yet stays friendly to the merely curious. Book early: the farm tours, the crawl and the most popular seminars have sold out in recent years.