Devine Cheese and Wine: A Café Full of Surprises

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. “Cheese was a huge focus for me,” she says, following her life in New York, “and I wanted to bring that back here. There were places for cheese in San Francisco, but there was nowhere really in the South Bay.”

Named for the street where the corner cafe resides, Ryan fatefully opened Devine Cheese and Wine 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 — borderline essential — resource for the community. “We would make cheese plates in pizza boxes, and then we would deliver them to everybody’s house,” says Ryan, sometimes delivering as many as 120 boxes personally. “And then everyone would log in and it was wonderful because people still felt part of something,” she says. “Everybody was there for cheese and wine.”

 

Cheese Pairings and Experiences

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 à 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. 

 

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 — equal parts shameful and exciting for a cheese educator — demonstrating Ryan’s commitment to offering that which isn’t typically available in the area. “Sometimes people come in like, ‘I don’t know anything about cheese. I just know I love it,’” she says. “I’m like, ‘Cool, you’re in the right place.’”

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. 

 

Favorite Cheeses

Ryan highlights a few of her favorites that are harder to find locally.

 

Caña de Oveja

“I know people have had Caña Cabra, which is more widely available, but nobody seems to have the sheep’s milk version,” says Ryan. Already a rarity as a soft-ripened sheep’s milk cheese. Caña 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.

 

Butterbloom

Even for those inclined to patronize a cheese cafe, there are still those who come in with long-held beliefs worth shifting. “Some people come in saying they don’t like brie, but I know they’re gonna like this,” says Ryan. Made by Oregon’s Briar Rose Creamery, the Guernsey-cow’s milk bloomy rind is “creamy and slightly mushroomy, but not overpowering.” 

 

Oakdale Aged Gouda

Based on a relationship with the relatively local Oakdale Creamery, forged at farmer’s markets, Ryan is further aging its Aged Gouda on premise. “They release their gouda aged at six months,” 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. “It’s in cryovac, so it’s not seeing any air,” she says. “I didn’t have to do anything crazy to it. The last one I had was 22 months,” developing tell-tale tyrosine crunch and tasting of butterscotch.

 

Inspired Flavors 

As a food writer, it’s rare to come across something I didn’t 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. “There’s more to pairing than just putting nuts and berries on a cheese board,” says Ryan, who sourced the syrupy, toothsome, and lightly piney accompaniment, paired with the aforementioned Caña de Oveja, at a local Russian market. “One of my servers calls it ‘Christmas in your mouth,’” she says.

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’s now-shuttered Casellula, I learned that she had, indeed, worked there.

“I was super inspired by what they did,” says Ryan. “I picked Brian Keyser’s brain all the time, and I asked whether he was sure he didn’t want to open a Casellula on the West Coast?” she recalls. Motivated by how much people loved Casellula’s 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.

“You can bring out aspects of a cheese with certain pairings, and you can bring out different aspects of the pairing component as well,” says Ryan, which can help people better understand the nuance of artisanal cheese compared to its industrial counterparts. “I want to take the mysteriousness out of cheese,” she says. “We’re here to have fun. So I think doing funky pairings allows people to do that.”