Many Bay Area cheese enthusiasts are familiar with Soyoung Scanlan's Andante Dairy. Despite the Petaluma creamery's small size, Scanlan has built a national reputation for soft-ripened cheeses with musical names such as Metronome and Nocturne.
In recent years, Scanlan has added another facet to her one-woman business: cheese importing.
Building on relationships she developed while traveling in France and working in creameries there, she is now bringing in a handful of artisan cheeses, primarily for restaurant customers such as the French Laundry and Bouchon. But I recently purchased a wedge of one of her imports – a Basque sheep's milk wheel called Ardi Gasna – at Bi-Rite Market in San Francisco. It's dreamy cheese.
Ardi Gasna means sheep's milk cheese in the Basque language. Ossau-Iraty and Abbaye de Belloc, both widely available at Bay Area cheese counters, are similar cheeses from the same Pyrenees region. But Scanlan points to some differences.
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