Webster Marquez, Bohemian Creamery
As you take a hairpin curve along Occidental Road near the Laguna de Santa Rosa, you’ll spot Bohemian Creamery’s hallmark road signs. Turn into the driveway and you’ll arrive at this promised land for super small-batch artisanal cheese. Featuring a storefront, cheesemaking room, aging rooms, and spacious patio perched above the Laguna’s lush pastures, Bohemian Creamery offers tours and tastings that deepen and expand the customers’ knowledge and appreciation for local cheese. In this Member Spotlight, we chat with Owner/Head Cheesemaker Webster Marquez on making a career change, finding fellowship, and the need for diversity.
NOTE: Bohemian Creamery closed permanently in December 2024, but we have decided to leave this spotlight up in honor of their service to the community. They were a Farm Trails member from 2016 to 2024.
- How did you get interested in farming/start your business?
I’ve been farming in some way or another since I was in the middle of college, even though I graduated on the East Coast with a Foreign Affairs degree. I was a winemaker and vineyard worker for many years after college before I took a medium-hard right turn and decided to try my hand at something similar-not-similar: making cheese. I apprenticed with the founder of Bohemian Creamery for a few years before buying the business from her when she was ready to retire.
- What do you do?
I make as many kinds of cheese as possible from cow, goat, sheep, and occasionally even water buffalo milks. We’re a creamery so we don’t have animals; we rely on the generosity and willingness of local dairy farmers to share the milk that they produce to make our cheeses.
- What do you find most rewarding about your work?
I love making things. I also love making things that people want to put in their mouths and not immediately spit out! If you think about the level of trust people have in you to let that happen, it’s pretty astounding. What I particularly love about cheese is the creativity: you can take the same basic building blocks (as we’re mammals, milk is as basic as it gets) and spin that in a million different directions. It’s far less hidebound than wine and you can just f&$% around and find out.
- What do you value about being a member of Farm Trails?
It’s definitely the help Farm Trails gives us to share more cheese with more people. Additionally, Farm Trails is one of the core organizations that helps create community in the Sonoma County ag crowd – we all spend A LOT of time with our heads down working our butts off and it’s nice to find fellowship with other people doing the same thing.
- What are your hopes for the future of your business and/or Sonoma County ag?
Diversity, diversity, diversity. First, we need diversity of product: resilience is built through busting through the duopoly of vineyards and pastureland and building out agriculture based around the widest variety of crops. Second, we need diversity in producers: I’d love to see people from all backgrounds farming. It’s in your blood, sure! But it’s a gene that can pop up anywhere and anytime. Third, I’d love to see diversity in markets, as we need to spread far and wide what good shit we make here.
- What advice would you share with someone starting out in your line of business?
Make friends with everyone. They all want to help you, I swear.
Photos by Lisa Rose, The Farmers Photographer.