Cheese, Louise! You'll melt at this fest

If cheese is your idea of manna from heaven, Pike Place Market is where you'll want to spend your weekend, especially if Mom happens to be a bona fide turophile.

The market's cobbled streets and alleys will teem with hand-crafted cheeses that hail from Bainbridge Island to as far as New Zealand for the second-annual Seattle Cheese Festival, which kicks off with seminars Friday and features a host of events through Sunday.

Festival founder and DeLaurenti Specialty Food & Wine owner Pat McCarthy expects as many as 100,000 cheese lovers will nibble their way along a Cheese Concourse, sink their teeth into the art and science of cheese-making at seminars like "Mold — Growth in the Cheese Business" and melt over the offerings of small cheese producers in the Artisanal Alley.

What makes a cheese artisanal? To McCarthy it's the limited production, using milk from one's own farm. Plus, personal touches like naming creamy creations after a favorite cow or landmark, such as Estrella Family Creamery's Wynoochee River Blue.

Running a small farm doesn't leave much money or time for marketing, however — after all, someone still needs to feed and milk the livestock. California cheese makers will far outnumber their Washington counterparts at the festival, which McCarthy attributed to that state's extensive cheese marketing campaign. Nonetheless, several popular local cheese makers will be on hand, including Lynden's Silver Springs Creamery, Ferndale's Appel Farms and Jumpin' Good Goat Dairy of Ocean Park, on the Long Beach Peninsula.

"The industry here is in its infancy from a handmade-cheese perspective," McCarthy said. "They are still growing, and with the traditional growing pains, but it's really nice to have options and be able to bring those small family producers to market."

The wine garden and Artisanal Alley are $5 each, but the festival itself is free, including cooking demonstrations, beer and wine tasting at DeLaurenti's and a scavenger hunt for children. Twenty-five Seattle area restaurants will offer cheese-infused dishes or a special cheese course on their menus during the event, including Brasa, Maximilien in the Market, Salumi and Café Juanita.

Festival hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For Friday's cheese seminars, costs and other festival-related information, go to www.seattlecheesefestival.com or call 206-849-7508.

Karen Gaudette: 206-515-5618

or kgaudette@seattletimes.com