Rob Graff
Board Member
Rob Graff is a cheese monger and the Director of Events at Venissimo Cheese in San Diego as well as the founder of Cheese & Libation Expo. Rob is a husband, father, PTA member, and art lover who spends his free time reading, running (sometimes at the same time!), and hanging with his family. Rob grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and moved to San Diego to go to college in 1998. After graduating, Rob took a job with a distribution company in San Francisco. He spent a couple of years learning the business before returning to San Diego. Interested in learning about cheese, Rob took a job at Venissimo in 2008. It was meant to be a bridge back to the corporate world but turned into much more.
In 2009, Rob started Venissimo’s Academy of Cheese (AoC). Over the next several years, he led dozens of intimate tastings as well as large corporate events. Over the last decade, Venissimo has collaborated with hundreds of other San Diego businesses – breweries, wineries, distilleries, etc. – anything and everything that you can pair with cheese!
In 2017 Rob helped launch Veni Voyages, customer cheese trips. This was largely built on the trust of the Venissimo brand and the Academy of Cheese program. To date, Rob has taken groups to Northern Italy, Southern France, Normandy, Sicily, the Alps, Paso Robles, and Northern California.
Rob established Liquid City in 2019 with the purpose of advancing the artisan cheese industry in Southern California via two large cheese events – a trade-focused event called Makers Night and a consumer-focused event called Cheese Expo. Rob rebranded this event in 2024 which is now called Cheese & Libation Expo. 2025 will be the fifth installment and every year gets bigger and better.
Today, Rob continues to oversee Venissimo’s Academy of Cheese and Veni Voyages while also producing the annual Cheese & Libation Expo.