"I've been here since I was a little kid," Gabriel Luddy told the Sonoma Index-Tribune the morning after his family said it would close Vella Cheese Company. "My mom, my grandfather used to sit out here and talk to everyone as they came in." That was late August. By the time the Plaza tree is lit on Nov. 21, the stone building at 315 Second St. E. will have gone more than two months without selling cheese. Oso Sonoma will have been closed for about eight weeks. A restaurant in the old post office will be heading into its first December.
Ninety-Four Years, Then Ten Days
Vella's story starts in 1931, when a group of local dairymen asked Gaetano "Tom" Vella to open his own fromagerie. He developed the dry Monterey Jack that stayed the company's signature cheese. His son, Ignazio "Ig" Vella, became known as the "Godfather of Artisanal Cheeses." After that the work passed to Ig's widow Sally, their daughter Chickie, and Chickie's children Miranda and Gabriel Luddy.
The building is older than the business. According to the company's own history, it went up in 1904 as a brewery and lost its wooden third story to a fire. Vella started making cheese there in 1931. Tom Vella moved production to the original Sonoma Mission Creamery building in 1951 and brought it back to the Second Street stone building in 1969.
The family's Facebook announcement, as quoted by the Index-Tribune, said the business "has never fully recovered from the challenges of COVID" and that running a small artisanal company had become "more than we can sustain." On the day of the announcement, Luddy expected the shop to stay open for several more months while it sold off its inventory. That's not how it went. People started lining up outside at 6 a.m. the next morning. As the Index-Tribune reported in September, demand was heavy enough that the shop sold its last cheese on Sept. 4, about 10 days after the announcement. The family left open the possibility of future pop-ups to sell remaining aged cheese.
So the inventory meant to last into the winter holidays was gone before the end of summer.
Familiar Buildings, New Names
Two weeks after Vella closed, chef David Bush announced that Oso Sonoma would close on Sept. 26 after 12 years on the Plaza. Parkside Wine Bar, next door, closed the same day. He told the Index-Tribune that the kitchen and building needed upgrades and that "it was too costly to spend the money on a building we don't own." Readers had named Oso Best New Restaurant in the paper's 2015 People's Choice Awards.
In the same stretch, new restaurants opened in buildings that longtime residents know by their old names.
| Address | What it was | What it is this fall |
|---|---|---|
| 101 E. Napa St. | Sonoma's 19th-century post office | Dead Letter |
| 561 Fifth St. W. | La Hacienda | Sonoma Eats |
| 497 First St. W. | Taub Family Outpost | Smash, with Beacon upstairs |
| 201 W. Napa St., Suite 10 | Marketplace Haircutters | See's Candies holiday pop-up, from mid-November |
| 315 Second St. E. | Vella Cheese Company since 1931 | Closed since Sept. 4 |
| Sonoma Plaza | Oso Sonoma and Parkside Wine Bar | Closed since Sept. 26 |
Dead Letter is the newest restaurant from Sondra Bernstein and John Toulze, the team behind the girl & the fig, and Jeremy Zimmerman runs the kitchen. The Index-Tribune's summer roundup describes a Spanish charcoal grill at the center of a share-friendly menu that runs from chicken karaage with hummus to butterflied trout in red curry. The art-filled dining room has a postal theme and includes a $5 Art-o-mat vending machine. Sonoma County's tourism office lists it at 65 seats, which is a useful number when booking for a holiday group.
Sonoma Eats comes from Efrain Balmes and Hayley Cutri, who also run Parkside Eats in Santa Rosa. They took over the former La Hacienda space and plan to add more of Balmes' Oaxacan family recipes as the restaurant settles in. The menu this winter may not be the one it opened with.
Smash is the oldest of the three. Ari Weiswasser opened it in May in the former Taub Family Outpost, with burgers downstairs and a cocktail bar called Beacon upstairs. This will be its first holiday season.
The See's shop is temporary. Starting in mid-November it will sell prepackaged candy from the old Marketplace Haircutters unit in Sonoma Marketplace, and it closes after the holidays.
Friday Morning Carries the Market Season Now
The Sonoma Tuesday Night Farmers Market ran on the Plaza from May 6 to Sept. 30 this year and is done until next season. The Sonoma Valley Certified Farmers Market at Arnold Field, 284 First St. W., runs every Friday year-round, 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. From now through spring, that's the weekly market in town.
It also has a new local vendor. Sonoma baker Linda Zaiss and her daughter Nicole Brown started selling their Crème and Crumbles cheesecakes there on Oct. 2. They bake in the Rotary kitchen at the Sonoma Community Center. Nova Terra Creamery, which makes plant-based cheeses, has the Friday market on its calendar for Friday, Oct. 30.
If you need cheese for a holiday board, the Sonoma Cheese Factory's website lists its shop at 2 W. Spain St., open daily from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. That page hasn't been updated recently, so call before you go.
The Calendar Holds Its Dates
Here are the season's events, in order:
- Veterans Holiday Market, Saturday, Nov. 14, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday, Nov. 15, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., at the Veterans Memorial Building, 126 First St. W. It's free, with local makers and a holiday-card activity.
- Lighting of the Sonoma Plaza, Saturday, Nov. 21, 5 to 8 p.m. It's free, with food, drinks, live music and the community tree lighting.
- Lighted Tractor Parade, Saturday, Nov. 28, 6:30 p.m. The free parade circles the Plaza and is hosted by the Sonoma Valley Vintners & Growers Alliance with the City.
- Sycamore tree lighting at Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn, Thursday, Dec. 3, at 100 Boyes Blvd. The listing gives 4:45 p.m. and says the tree is lit at sundown. Santa will be there.
- Sonoma Sip 'N Shop, Saturday, Dec. 5, 2 to 5 p.m., around the Plaza. Local shops are paired with Sonoma Valley wineries, and pickup locations for participants hadn't been announced as of late October.
- Broadway Holiday at the Sebastiani Theatre, 476 First St. E., mid-December, with Broadway performers and holiday music. Check the theater for exact show dates.
The dates and the new storefronts line up. See's is set to open in mid-November, around the time of the Veterans Holiday Market and the Plaza lighting. Sip 'N Shop pairs Plaza retailers with wineries on a Saturday afternoon, and this year Oso and Parkside won't be on that walk. Dead Letter will be open on East Napa Street. The tractor parade on Nov. 28 circles the Plaza as it does every year. The Friday market on First Street West runs every week through the whole season.
The stone building at 315 Second St. E. has stood since 1904, and Vella made cheese there for most of the years since. This December is the first in 94 years without Vella selling cheese in Sonoma.
If the changes around the Plaza this fall have you wondering what your home is worth, Lauren Lawson and the Peterson Lawson Group can walk you through how a Sonoma property is valued right now. Request a Confidential Home Valuation and we'll review your property with you privately.