For nearly 20 years, Alemar Cheese has been a prestige brand in Minnesota specialty dairy, a small-batch cheese company whose products have made their way to some of the best restaurants and tables from coast to coast. Bent River Camembert may be the company’s best-known product, but over the years it has scored a number of other hits with cheeses like Blue Earth Brie and the funky Good Thunder.
As of last Sunday, the brand and its cheeses are no more. Founder Keith Adams (above) moved Alemar from Minnesota to California at the end of 2024, and last Sunday the California-based business shut its doors for good.
We’ve known Adams for years (he was a regular at our North Coast Nosh sip and sample events) and loved his cheeses for their subtlety and quality.
We spoke on the phone with him earlier today about the closure of Alemar and its California-born sister business, William Cofield Cheesemakers.
This conversation has been edited and abridged for publication.
HT: HOW DID ALEMAR GET STARTED?
KEITH ADAMS: Alemar started producing cheese in 2009 in Mankato – just me and a cheese vat and an idea to make Camembert. I didn’t do any market research, I didn’t know it was a cheese the market wanted, but it turned out that it was. I was in the right place at the right time with the right cheese.
Slowly but surely Bent River began to be distributed around the country. We won some awards, we got some press, and the company just kept growing. It was all good news for a long long time.
I grew up in California and I married a girl in Minnesota. And so when [my youngest daughter] left the nest, I had a strong desire to go back to California.
Zingerman’s has classes and Ari Weinzweig has been a mentor and supportive figure for me and other people. They had a seminar on visioning, and in 2013 I did this seminar about having two cheese companies, one in Minnesota and one California, in 2023. And when we got to 2023, the companies existed, but the narrative didn’t line up.
What happened was, I had a level of success where I felt confident as a cheesemaker and I had distribution relationships, and I met a lot of cheesemongers, there was a lot of goodwill. And I dreamed a bigger dream and found a partner to financially build this beautiful place in California, in Sebastapol. It’s a smaller town west of Santa Rosa.
We built the plant in a place – it’s an indoor food destination, a little like the Ferry Building in San Francisco. I’m at this place called the Barlow [Market], which once was an apple processing facility. It’s a community of makers – there are wineries, an ice cream maker, bars and restaurants and things like that, and it has a cool vibe. But for a number of reasons, the foot traffic never got to critical mass.
HT: WHAT WAS THE INSPIRATION FOR WILLIAM COFIELD, YOUR CALIFORNIA CHEESE COMPANY?
ADAMS: In 2014 I went to England – my heritage is obnoxiously Anglo, and I lived in England when I was a boy for a couple years. And I really got into British cheese after I started Alemar. I learned how to make Stilton and Cheddar at the source which was an amazing experience.
We had a lot of good news, but we never quite got over the hump. Part of that was we spent a ton of money at the beginning. Also I made Stilton and Cheddar and Stilton takes four month to age and Cheddar takes a year, so it took a long time to get inventory, as opposed to Bent River which takes three weeks.
The cheese was good! But it was not exceptional at the beginning, and we did not get the reception that Bent River had. I kept working at it, and eventually we got there, but by the time we got there it was too little, too late.
HT: WHAT EVENTUALLY LED TO THE END OF COFIELD AND ALEMAR?
ADAMS: We have had our share of adversity that wasn’t created by me – we had some large forest fires in the area, and in 2019 we had a flood at the Barlow where our building was 10 inches underwater and we were out of business for five weeks. And COVID was a fuckin’ blow. It really hurt artisan cheese in general, and Alemar did OK through that, but Cofield really struggled and if I didn’t get some loans from the government I couldn’t have kept going.
I’m the guy who goes down with the ship. A clearheaded, calculating human being would have pulled the plug about five years ago, but that’s not me. I just believed I could turn it around and make it work.
The other piece of it is that we moved Alemar to the Food Building in 2019, and I thought that was a masterstroke. But COVID happened about six months later – and while we still had sales, it never grew after I left. But I was so underwater here with this business [Cofield] that I didn’t have time to go back and help Alemar get on track.
It’s one of those situations like a tsunami, you’re just holding onto something that floats. I went back as often as I could and tried to rally the troops, but I finally got to the point where I had a decision to make, and the decision I made was to move Alemar from Minneapolis to California. That was at the end of October in 2024.
We made an arrangement with a cheese maker called Point Reyes Farmstead, and they sell nationwide and they’re everywhere. I’m friends with them, and they agreed to let me cross-stock my pallets with theirs, so I could get my cheese to the Midwest for an inexpensive price.
But I wasn’t able to stick the landing. We had consistency issues with the cheeses where some batches were fantastic and some were not. If I’d had enough bandwidth I could’ve corrected it very quickly, but I didn’t.
As a result, we ended up losing a distribution relationship. There was enough good news to keep me going but if I’d nailed the thing with Alemar moving I think we’d be having a different conversation.
What it boils down to is: Cofield is nine years old. The last five years have been a total challenge to keep financially going. For years I’ve been getting out of bed saying, ‘I’m going to keep doing this,’ but about three weeks ago I woke up and said: ‘I can’t.’
I’m at peace with the whole thing. I loved the work, and I loved the people I worked with, it just one day became too much. I’m going out of this as positively as I can, but it has been a real struggle.
HT: DO YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE FOR ASPIRING CHEESEMAKERS?
ADAMS: Start small is the number one thing. The landscape has really changed in terms of – COVID really did a number of cheese counters, and the labor got cut to the bone. As a result, fewer mongers, less excitement about new things, and a general gravitation toward pre-packaged stuff that can be cryo-vacced and put into a case.
Start small and think of a cheese that’s not being made that you can tell a good story about. I was at the Minneapolis Farmers Market handing out samples one at a time – I just worked really really hard to get the word out, and slowly but surely there was a tipping point in the Cities where if you didn’t have Bent River in the case people would get pissed! And then it was everywhere. And that was really really fun.
It went to Chicago next, and we were shipping cheese to Murray’s in New York City, which is the shop, and they were selling it to Jean-Georges, you know, three Michelin starred restaurants, and I thought: this is pretty amazing.
But, really, start small, think of something you can do that’s slightly different than everybody else, and then work your ass off.
HT: ANYTHING ELSE YOU’D LIKE TO ADD?
ADAMS: My kids are OK, my family is OK, I’m in a great relationship, and I have a network of absolutely fucking great friends. All of that wrapped up together has given me a glimmer of excitement about what’s coming next. That’s been helpful.
To have mustered up the courage to put myself out there and run my own ship with Alemar took a lot of courage and I created a cheese a lot of people really really loved, and I’ve tried to be a good member of the cheese community, and those are things I’m proudest of – the people I’ve been able to work with and support, and having the courage to get out there and do it and have it work.
I did want to shout out Kieran Folliard even though things didn’t work out [at the Food Building] – he was a complete gentleman, through and through. I’m so thrilled that Diane’s Place is doing what it’s doing, and will be expanding into where Alemar used to be.
Who knows what’s going to happen in the future, and I’m really grateful for the people who supported us along the way, especially the folks in Minnesota and the Twin Cities. I certainly gave it my all.