photo credit: Michelle Marques
Joe Matos Cheese Factory in Santa Rosa on January 22, 2025

 One of the first artisan cheesemakers in the North Bay is closing shop on January 31st, 2025..

Joe Matos Cheese Factory was founded in 1979 by Joe and Mary Matos. Their cheese is based on a style from their homeland, the Azores. The cheese is called St. Jorge, and it's made from milk produced by the dairy herd on their property off Llano Road in Santa Rosa. St. Jorge has a reputation around the Bay Area, especially in Portuguese communities.

On a visit to the small cheese factory this week, customers showed up to get their last wedges before the official closure on January 31st.

Ren Brown, a customer who has been visiting Joe Matos Cheese Factory for 17 years, spoke with KRCB News as his order was being wrapped in cheese paper.

"I'm so sad and my relatives across the country are sad because it was always their Christmas present," said Brown.

Sylvia Tucker, Joe and Mary’s daughter, is the current owner of the operation. She shows us the tiny counter and the adjoining aging room.

“This is more of our aged cheese on this side, and then we have more of the original over there, but that’s all that we have left," Tucker said, gesturing to the shelves.

We head back outside to stand in the shade of the barn near the cheese shed, where Tucker explains the reasons for the closure.

“We had some difficulties with a workman's comp issue. It tripled our monthly payments and so we were not able to keep up with that. We ended up having to let all let all of our employees go," said Tucker.

Tucker says there were also difficulties due to her father’s health.

“His health is declining and I'm his caretaker, and he's in need of me to take care of him, 24/7 now, so, he comes first. This has been a very, very difficult decision to make but we are closing as of January 31st. We stopped processing cheese in November. So now we're just selling out the rest of our, you know, inventory that we have," Tucker explained.

Another factor was the closure of a nearby Santa Rosa business called Wildbrine, a fermented food producer. Wildbrine shuttered at the end of 2024 and Tucker says that impacted her operation.

“Wildbrine supplied us with all of their leftover cabbage, it came in these huge bins that you see here. It was wonderful feed for the animals, the animals loved it. It was easy to feed because it came in the bins, and we just had to feed it out. So, the closure for them again, was very hard on us. I ended up having to buy hay, because we only were able to produce so much on our property. And so, I had to buy hay for the first time in many, many years. So yeah, it affected us a lot," said Tucker.

This is the second Sonoma County cheesemaker to close in the last month. Bohemian Creamery, which had been producing cheese in Sebastopol since 2010, closed shop on December 30th.

Tucker says times are hard for dairy farmers and cheesemakers.

“I am seeing a trend, I have been hearing, you know, the Freestone they had the little cheese place in there, that wasn't open very long and you know, it just seems like there are a lot of people going away. It’s getting difficult here in California, you know, for the farmers. For the agricultural people, it's getting really hard," Tucker said.

When asked how the closure of her family business is impacting her on a personal level, Tucker’s eyes welled with tears.

“It breaks my heart. The hardest thing was talking to my dad and trying to explain to him what's going on and he understands, you know, he knows, he knows it's hard. He knows we've been trying our hardest to keep it alive, but he's okay with it, though. As long as he can see cows out his window, he's happy. So yeah," said Tucker.

Tucker says she is keeping the family recipe and their cheese making licenses in case there is an opportunity for them to reopen in the future. For now, they will continue to raise beef cattle.