On Friday, Santa Rosa’s Joe Matos Cheese and Farmstead Co. closed after 45 years. The cheesemaker shut down production of its singular cheese, St. Jorge, back in November, but kept its store open until it cleared out its inventory, according to Sonoma Magazine.
Joe and Mary Matos first opened the cheese factory in 1979 after immigrating to the Bay Area from Portugal’s São Jorge Island in the 1960s. The company’s signature St. Jorge cheese was an old family recipe, passed through many generations to Matos’ daughter, Sylvia Tucker, the last to oversee the company.
“We were just going underwater,” Tucker told the magazine, citing her father’s declining health and various political and economic challenges affecting small family dairies. The closing of a local fermentation plant that supplied the Matos’ dairy cows with leftover cabbage didn’t help, nor did an insurance claim that caused their monthly rates to triple, Tucker said.
St. Jorge cheese is “tangy, buttery and nutty, with hints of citrus,” per KQED’s Gabe Meline, and was commonly found on cheese boards at restaurants and wineries across the Bay Area. Some local restaurants like Handline in Sebastopol and wineries like Kendall-Jackson and Castello di Amarosa have stocked up on the beloved cheese ahead of the closure, according to KQED.
Tucker told Sonoma Magazine that she hopes to someday revive the family cheese factory. But for now, she only plans to keep raising beef cattle.
