In late 2023, Jennifer Bice visited Omer Seltzer, a new Bay Area artisan cheesemaker, at his stand at the Sebastopol farmers’ market. A recent transplant to Sonoma County, Seltzer had requested the meeting because he needed a steady supply of milk and Bice had prize-winning goats.
Seltzer’s request came at an opportune moment. Bice, now 78, had sold the creamery from her family’s nationally known cheese company, Redwood Hill Farm & Creamery, to a Swiss dairy cooperative eight years earlier. She retained ownership of the farm and its herd of 300 goats, who come from a line of animals that regularly won awards at national livestock shows and helped turn the company into an acclaimed brand. The farm still provided milk to the creamery, but she was looking to downsize, so she could have more free time. Working with a smaller producer like Seltzer would be ideal.
Bice tasted Seltzer’s products, which ranged from fresh chevre to weeks-old bloomy rind cheeses to hard aged ones. They were all “outstanding and delicious,” she said. “A lot of people can make one type really well. But his variety and competence in making all the different methods was impressive to me.”…