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| The perfect picnic basket starts here! |
Oakdale, CA
California certainly has no shortage of cheese factories; they are everywhere. Most follow a typical blueprint: a storefront selling cheese, baked goods and a few deli items, oftentimes with a counter lined with plastic domes covering plates of sample cubes speared with toothpicks.
Not that there's anything wrong with that!
Once in a while, you find a gem. Oakdale Cheese & Specialties is one of those gems. The Buck family has been in the cheesemaking business for four generations, with no signs of stopping. In fact, Walter Buck can still be found in the factory each day well before sunrise, pumping milk, cutting curds and filling molds. That wasn't meant to sound dirty, by the way.
A variety of artisanal cheeses and spreads can be enjoyed on a few acres that seem worlds away from the nearby highway. Pick up some meats and olives from their store, add some fruit from the produce stand, then check out the farm animals and koi ponds as you sink your teeth into some Cheesecake Brownies "to die for" (according to customers). I'm sold!
