{"id":4234,"date":"2025-02-06T03:01:59","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T03:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/devine-cheese-and-wine-a-cafe-full-of-surprises\/"},"modified":"2025-02-06T03:01:59","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T03:01:59","slug":"devine-cheese-and-wine-a-cafe-full-of-surprises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/devine-cheese-and-wine-a-cafe-full-of-surprises\/","title":{"rendered":"Devine Cheese and Wine: A Caf\u00e9 Full of Surprises"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Liana Ryan<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Despite being part of the greater San Francisco Bay area, San Jose<\/a>, California, is much better known for its bytes than its bites. Recently transplanted back from New York, California native Liana Ryan saw a specific opportunity to bring some much-needed cheese to the San Jose area. \u201cCheese was a huge focus for me,\u201d she says, following her life in New York, \u201cand I wanted to bring that back here. There were places for cheese in San Francisco, but there was nowhere really in the South Bay.\u201d<\/p>\n

Named for the street where the corner cafe resides, Ryan fatefully opened Devine Cheese and Wine<\/a> in January 2020, two months ahead of mandated COVID closures. Pivoting quickly to providing takeout cheese plates and online classes, Ryan was able to establish the shop as a worthwhile \u2014 borderline essential \u2014 resource for the community. \u201cWe would make cheese plates in pizza boxes, and then we would deliver them to everybody’s house,\u201d says Ryan, sometimes delivering as many as 120 boxes personally. \u201cAnd then everyone would log in and it was wonderful because people still felt part of something,\u201d she says. \u201cEverybody was there for cheese and wine.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Cheese Pairings and Experiences<\/h2>\n
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Devine Cheese & Wine cheeses with accouterments<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Post-pandemic, and now celebrating five years of business, everybody is still coming in for cheese and wine. (And, I would add from personal experience, also for the imaginative accouterments that accompany the cheese, elevating it into something worthy of being the main character of a table-service restaurant.) Devine Cheese and Wine is a true cheese cafe. Cheese plates comprise most of the menu, with a scant handful of other \u00e0 la carte items that can be mostly prepared behind the counter. While Ryan still offers some take-out catering cheese boxes, Devine is not a cheese shop. Dining in and experiencing cheese that has been carefully curated, tended, and paired is the heart of the operation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Spanish cheeses at Devine Cheese & Wine<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Of the approximately 20 cheeses on the menu from which to mix and match, there were more than a few with which I was unfamiliar \u2014 equal parts shameful and exciting for a cheese educator \u2014 demonstrating Ryan\u2019s commitment to offering that which isn\u2019t typically available in the area. \u201cSometimes people come in like, \u2018I don’t know anything about cheese. I just know I love it,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Cool, you’re in the right place.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Cheeses are sorted into fresh, soft ripened\/bloomy, washed rind, natural rind, and blue, plus a few selections of charcuterie, each served with its own accouterment. Everything is priced at $7, You can also let Ryan and her staff choose a selection of three items.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Favorite Cheeses<\/h2>\n

Ryan highlights a few of her favorites that are harder to find locally.<\/p>\n

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Ca\u00f1a de Oveja<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Cana de Oveja<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI know people have had Ca\u00f1a Cabra, which is more widely available, but nobody seems to have the sheep’s milk version,\u201d says Ryan. Already a rarity as a soft-ripened sheep\u2019s milk cheese. Ca\u00f1a de Oveja is both tangy and earthy, and not just a little visually pleasing: formed in a log shape, slices of the cheese reveal a concentric creamline.<\/p>\n

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Butterbloom<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Butterbloom cheese board photo credit Briar Rose Creamery<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Even for those inclined to patronize a cheese cafe, there are still those who come in with long-held beliefs worth shifting. \u201cSome people come in saying they don\u2019t like brie, but I know they\u2019re gonna like this,\u201d says Ryan. Made by Oregon\u2019s Briar Rose Creamery, the Guernsey-cow\u2019s milk bloomy rind is \u201ccreamy and slightly mushroomy, but not overpowering.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Oakdale Aged Gouda<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Oakdale Aged Gouda photo courtesy of Oakdale Cheese<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Based on a relationship with the relatively local Oakdale Creamery, forged at farmer\u2019s markets, Ryan is further aging its Aged Gouda on premise. \u201cThey release their gouda aged at six months,\u201d says Ryan, though she was occasionally able to have the creamery hold on to a wheel here or there for a more crystalline version. To take the pressure off the creamery, however, Ryan experimented with just holding onto a six-month piece in one of her lowboy refrigerators. \u201cIt’s in cryovac, so it’s not seeing any air,\u201d she says. \u201cI didn’t have to do anything crazy to it. The last one I had was 22 months,\u201d developing tell-tale tyrosine crunch and tasting of butterscotch.<\/p>\n

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Inspired Flavors\u00a0<\/h2>\n
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Devine Cheese and Wine Cheeses cheeseboard<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a food writer, it\u2019s rare to come across something I didn\u2019t even know was edible, but such was the case when I visited Devine Cheese and Wine, where the cheese plate Ryan presented included preserved baby pinecones as an accompaniment. \u201cThere’s more to pairing than just putting nuts and berries on a cheese board,\u201d says Ryan, who sourced the syrupy, toothsome, and lightly piney accompaniment, paired with the aforementioned Ca\u00f1a de Oveja, at a local Russian market. \u201cOne of my servers calls it \u2018Christmas in your mouth,\u2019\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

While I was personally unfamiliar with the pinecones, there was something distinctly familiar about the bravado of the unique accompaniments, many of them made in-house, including caramel popcorn, black pepper gastrique, garlic confit, hazelnut rosemary brittle, and whiskey-soaked figs. When I inquired whether Ryan was familiar with NYC\u2019s now-shuttered Casellula<\/a>, I learned that she had, indeed, worked there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was super inspired by what they did,\u201d says Ryan. \u201cI picked Brian Keyser’s brain all the time, and I asked whether he was sure he didn\u2019t want to open a Casellula on the West Coast?\u201d she recalls. Motivated by how much people loved Casellula\u2019s model, myself included, she sought to bring the same cheese ideology home to California. For those of us still mourning Casellula, who was forced out by a new landlord, the visit felt like a homecoming, albeit across the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can bring out aspects of a cheese with certain pairings, and you can bring out different aspects of the pairing component as well,\u201d says Ryan, which can help people better understand the nuance of artisanal cheese compared to its industrial counterparts. \u201cI want to take the mysteriousness out of cheese,\u201d she says. \u201cWe’re here to have fun. So I think doing funky pairings allows people to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Liana Ryan Despite being part of the greater San Francisco Bay area, San Jose, California, is much better known for its bytes than its bites. Recently transplanted back from New York, California native Liana Ryan saw a specific opportunity to bring some much-needed cheese to the San Jose area. \u201cCheese was a huge focus for … Okumaya devam et “Devine Cheese and Wine: A Caf\u00e9 Full of Surprises”<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[395],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-milk-and-diary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}