Artisan Cheese Festival 2010

Bellwhether Farms table during the Marketplace

At a chef’s cook-off competition two weeks ago, the organizers set out an elaborate spread of shellfish, cocktails and cheeses to keep attendees occupied while they set up the main event.

As the reception stretched past an hour, my companion and I did the natural thing: we stuffed ourselves silly on Hog Island oysters, potent concoctions of apple cider-jalapeno vodka, and a myriad of Sonoma chevres, goudas and jacks.

We downed blue, brie, Bellwether, and oozy-rich burrata. We feasted on the fine food as fondue, rolled with fruit, swallowed in slabs, and slathered on crostini. We ate so much cheese, in fact, that we made ourselves ill, and both swore we’d never touch the stuff again.

Ah, what a difference a day makes. By the next morning, we were both back at it, raiding our refrigerators for the fine thing that our local dairy artisans do so well: fromage.

Still, I’m vowing to play a little smarter at my next cheesy smorgasbord, which will be a an enormous one, in the form of the California Artisan Cheese Festival, being held Mar. 26 through Mar. 29 at the Sheraton Sonoma County in Petaluma and at several Sonoma-area farms.

If you’re wondering how to possibly celebrate four non-stop days of cheese, you’re not alone. And it’s true that the first-ever Cheese Festival was a little rough in its inaugural year of 2007 – parts felt a bit like a cheese-centric, hectic Swap Meet, with too many guests jostling in too tight spaces, and a bit of overload on the pure cheese-snacking theme.

Yet subsequent years found it evolved into an entirely elegant, well-rounded event, and this year’s organizers have promised even better, saying they’re “reinventing the wheel” (a cheese joke, get it?).

A highlight remains the Sunday Artisan Marketplace Tent, wherein a small culinary city comes to life, populated by 24 cheese makers, 20 wineries and breweries, and 20 purveyors of handcrafted foods offering samples and selling their wares. New this year will be a wood-burning pizza oven cranking out crusty hot flatbreads oozing with cheese, and in a brilliant move, admission has been divided into two sessions, to alleviate the crowding that’s hindered past Marketplaces.

Cheese and wine pairing seminar during the 2009 festival.

Other new activities for 2010 include a Friday Night Barn Dance and Cheesemaker Mixer at Petaluma’s Green String Farm, featuring barbecue plus bites from Valley Ford’s Rocker Oysterfeller’s alongside brews from Petaluma’s Lagunitas Brewing Company and live music from the Green String Farm band.

The Saturday night party deserves kudos based on its name alone: Curds, Cooks, & Cuvees. In this new event, eight top chefs will team up with eight cheesemakers and eight vintners to create an eight-course, cheese-inspired tasting dinner, followed a visit to the Sweets Lounge for lavish desserts, music, and champagne.

For some of the most popular events, you’re already out of luck. Tours of Cowgirl Creamery and Marin French Cheese Company are sold out, as are programs hosted by local European-heritage California cheesemakers, sharing their secrets on their Basque-, Dutch-, and Swiss-inspired creations.

Yet you can still snap up tickets for programs on cheese and wine pairing, demystifying the difference between raw and pasteurized cheeses (yes, raw cheese is safe to eat, and incomparably delicious), and cheese and beer pairings, from CIA Greystone instructor chef Andy Wild, who has such a passion for brews and cheese that he named his new son Porter.

But diehard fromage fans, there’s also a session on Home Cheesemaking, with Mary Karlin from Sonoma’s Ramekins Culinary School. Step one: Buy a cow, goat or sheep.

Details: California Artisan Cheese Festival, artisancheesefestival.com.