Another longtime West Marin dairy farm has recently entered the cheese business, adding to the roster of farmstead cheeses from this bucolic community. Like the Giacomini family that makes Point Reyes Original Blue and the new Toma, the Lafranchi family has deep roots in the region.
Seventeen-year-old Fredilino Lafranchi left Switzerland a century ago with $35 in his pocket. A few years later, he had a wife and a dairy farm in Nicasio Valley, just a few miles east of Point Reyes Station.
Their son, Will, maintained the farm and raised six children there. Over the years, Will Lafranchi made many trips back to the Maggia valley, his ancestral homeland in the Italian-speaking Swiss canton of Ticino, to visit relatives. He admired the mountain cheeses they served him and dreamed of making similar cheeses on the ranch, but never did.
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