Negranti Creamery

Just off of Highway 101, Tin City plaza is an industrial park full of tasting rooms, including wineries, a cider bar, a brewery and a brandy distiller: an amusement park for the imbiber. For road-ragged teetotalers, there is a wonderful ice cream shop. The scoops are delicious, low-lactose and low-fat, so there’s no excuse to miss it.

The Negranti Creamery isn’t just another kooky ice cream shop. Sure, signature flavors such as blackberry-rosemary and salted brown sugar shadow trends of hip scoop shops that love to balance the sweet and the savory, but this ice cream tastes completely different from any other we’ve tasted. The difference is sheep milk.

Sheep milk doesn’t add much in the way of flavor, but instead makes creamy ice cream without enough lactose to upset sensitive digesters and without enough fat to spoil a diet. (For dairy traditionalists who miss the richness of traditional cow milk ice cream, a few flavors made with conventional milk  are available.)

We love the cinnamon and honey flavor because the combination goes so well with the lighter ice cream base. It reminds us of Mexican horchata (sweetened rice milk).

We also like Tin City Road, a hybrid of rocky road and an old-fashioned tin roof sundae: chocolate ice cream base swirled with marshmallow fluff, caramel, and peanuts. It works because the ice cream base itself is so light and refreshing.

The advantage of starting with the softer sheep milk background is that you can throw anything in or on this frozen treat. The menu includes a variety of sauces, syrups and a killer waffle cone. Every scoop served in a cup includes a little waffle cone chip to enrich it. The waffle chip may be used in place of a spoon for those who are absolutely committed to conservation of materials.