As winter passes, the fields witness an explosion of lush, warm green vegetation, dotted with colorful flowers. Rich in biodiversity, this blooming marks the beginning of perhaps the most beautiful season and brings with it the most extraordinary of goat cheeses.
After spending the cold months in the barn, the goats are free to move about. The milk is abundant and rich in fats, proteins, minerals, and volatile aromatic compounds. Left raw, it combines with countless microbes from the field, the udder, and the milking parlor. The goat chooses what it likes best from a buffet of fresh grass, flowers, and herbs. Many of these aromas transfer to the milk, imparting uniquely fresh herbal and floral notes of this spring growth period to the cheese.
Goats were one of the first ruminants domesticated by humans.
About 10,000 years ago, in the region now called the Levant. The first documented goat cheese dates back 5,000 years. In the tomb of Tutankhamun, traces of goat cheese were found, perfect for tasting for eternity.
These intelligent and resilient animals can graze in the most unlikely environments, from cold, steep mountains to hot, arid deserts. Unlike the more finicky heifers and sheep, the goat or "kid" willingly eats bitter and tough plant substances, even the bark of trees, and can survive without water for days. Goats were valued by small farms and families for their ability to live in small spaces and to subsist on the family's food scraps. Their extraordinary adaptability has allowed them to spread rapidly across the world, transported by land and by sea.
Goat's milk is less rich in lactose.
And its rich fat forms smaller, more easily digestible globules for the fragile human digestive system. Its health benefits also include a higher percentage of protein compared to cow's milk, more calcium, and less cholesterol, making it a perfect component of a balanced diet. Fresh goat's milk produced by a skilled goat breeder has a fresh, mineral aroma, delicately sweet yet tart and complex. It is the perfect raw material for the production of soft dairy cheeses, which age from sweet, milky freshness to dense, spicy, nutty complexity. However, this milk is versatile enough to produce every category of cheese, from goat raclette to goat blue and even goat gouda.
Nowadays, France has the largest variety of what are called 'chèvres,' which come in a myriad of different shapes. The love for goat cheese dates back over a thousand years and seems to have grown. However, the United Kingdom has a history concerning goats.
Once, goats were common in rural areas and were nicknamed 'the poor man's cow' because of their use by small families. In the 1700s, British agriculture changed dramatically, and landowners switched to raising large herds of dairy cows in fenced fields, depriving farmers of the opportunity to keep goats for personal use. Only in recent decades has goat cheese production begun to spread across the country, and while it is still a relatively small sector of the British dairy industry, goat milk and cheese are increasingly appreciated by British consumers, undoubtedly thanks to the social mobility of 'holidaymakers' of the mid- and late 20th century who took their first trips to the Loire Valley and Provence.
The United Kingdom, unfortunately for lovers of traditional artisanal dairy products, generally follows the modern European practice of keeping the herd indoors year-round. The feed is identical from one season to another, and milking is staggered throughout the year. Outdoor grazing is almost nonexistent.
Despite this widely accepted paradigm, some farmers have bravely transitioned to a more ethical and traditional open-grazing method. Among these, one of my favorites is the Norton and Yarrow cheese factory, based on the Earth Trust farm in Oxfordshire, which produces an award-winning goat cheese: Sinodun Hill and its ash-based counterpart, Brightwell Ash.
Fraser Norton and Rachel Yarrow, both from agricultural backgrounds, founded their goat cheese factory in 2014. During a vacation in Sicily, they read an article in a British magazine left by another guest, which talked about goat cheese production and “living the good life.” This inspired them to take on a new challenge, leave teaching and project management for a new adventure. They would move to the countryside and, with the help of the Earth Trust association, focus on producing high-quality artisanal goat cheese, taking into account animal welfare, sustainability, and the local community.
The result of this dream is a cheese that is now famous all over the world.
Sinodun Hill: a truncated pyramid produced with an ancient form of vegetable rennet, cardoon rennet, using milk from their herd of Anglo-Nubian goats. The chosen breed is nicknamed "the Jersey cow of goats" for its rich and fatty milk, ideal for making soft cheeses. During the winter months, the herd is fed hay produced from the local wild meadows, while between March and October the animals graze freely on the fresh pastures, feeding on the local flora abundant in this area.
The initial breeding takes place over a period of four days. The addition of starter cultures and rennet from cardoon to the milk is very low, as it mainly relies on the microbes from the whey of the previous day to acidify and coagulate the milk over the course of a day or more. The delicate milk curd is drained in molds for a few days and then the formed cheese is placed on racks to allow the beautiful surface mold to 'bloom'.
The Sinodun Hill cheese takes its name from a gypsum hill in the Thames Valley that overlooks the dairy. It has a strong flavor of yogurt, thyme, and citrus, with a creamy texture similar to a mousse. The rind is the work of a special yeast similar to mold, Geotrichum, which creates a rough ivory-colored crust that gently breaks the underlying paste to reveal subtle aromas that overlap with the freshness of the center of the cheese.
Until a few decades ago, it was almost impossible to offer a cheese board of British cheeses starting with a goat cheese. Thanks to the work of some great artisan cheesemakers like Fraser and Rachel, not only have the varieties and selection expanded, but also the long-lost local tradition of producing British goat cheeses has been revived with splendid results.
