Husband and wife start SLO County cheese company, complete with creamery tours and tastings
Paso Robles is a city for wine aficionados and what pairs better with wine than cheese?
Residents and tourists alike can now enjoy a cheese tour with a variety of sheep and goat cheeses for the tasting courtesy of Black Market Cheese Company — a new dairy and business launched by husband-and-wife duo Evan and Kristy Bishop.
Black Market Cheese Company, which opened for reservations on Sept. 29, offers farm tours and tastings of seasonally-available cheeses.
The cheese company is the latest passion project of the Bishops, who own and operate the farm-stay bed and breakfast, Rêves de Moutons, on their Paso Robles property.
The idea to open a bed and breakfast and cheese company came to the couple 10 years ago when they were deciding what their vision was for their life after retirement, Evan Bishop said.
“Kristy was physically and mentally exhausted from working in cancer care and I was burned out from the business side of photography,” he said. “We just started to toy around with different ideas on what retirement might look like, and the idea came to me: We have always wanted a couple of acres with sheep, and I thought about what we could do with sheep.”
What does a cheese tour entail?
The morning farm tour and cheese tasting option takes guests on a tour of the farm and garden and allows them to interact with the animals.
According to Kristy Bishop, the tour also allows guests to visit the farm store and see how the cheeses are aged through an observation window. At the conclusion of the tour, guests are provided with a tasting of three different varieties of cheeses made on the farm.
The morning tour costs $30 a person for a 90-minute session.
Alternatively for guests who do not want to take the full tour, there is an option to book a tasting for $15 a person.
Following the conclusion of the tour or tasting, the Bishops encourage guests to enjoy the farm.
“Guests are always welcome to stay as long as they’d like,” Kristy Bishop said. “We want to make sure that people have an opportunity to enjoy our space as much as we do.”
Different cheeses for different seasons
At Black Market Cheese Company, the Bishops said they want to focus on cultivating French-inspired farmstead cheeses.
To achieve this, they are only producing cheeses that come from the flock of animals they are raising on the farm.
Different cheeses are available during different seasons according to the breeding schedules of the animals, Evan Bishop said.
Sheep are bred in the fall and produce cheese in March. Goats are bred when the sheep finish lambing, producing cheese in late September.
In the future, the pair intend to partner with local farms to source milk if there are gaps in the animals’ production.
“We’ve set it up so that this is a places to spend time not just come in to see the animals and leave,” Kristy Bishop said. “It is a place where you can just spend time relaxing, unplugging and unwinding.”
For more information
Black Market Cheese Company is located at 7245 Nonpariel Road in Paso Robles.
Tours are offered Friday through Monday by reservation.
To book online, visit blackmarketcheeseco.com/book-online. For more information, email cheese@blackmarketcheeseco.com or call 805-369-1171.
