BRATTLEBORO — Similar to blue cheese, goat cheese (chèvre) is a category about which cheesemongers get to hear much whining.
“But I don't liiiiike goat cheese” is a near-constant refrain at nearly all of our nation's cheese counters.
I suppose if the only goat cheese I'd ever had the misfortune to eat was those little plastic vacuum-packed tubes of pale, gummy, acrid, animally paste, I might swear off goat cheese, too.
But that's like taking a swig of Golden Anniversary and, as a result, claiming you don't like beer. (Do they even make Golden Anniversary - or as we called it when we were poor, drunk students, “The G.A.” - anymore? It's probably better if you have no idea what I'm talking about here.)
So why is goat cheese so maligned? What is it about this product that makes many people turn up their noses and fuss like petulant 2-year-olds?
Might there be something to their complaints, or can it all be chalked up to a prevalence of inferior chèvre?
It's not like people come in to cheese counters and announce “I don't like cows' milk cheese!” or “Yuck! Don't give me any sheep cheese!” Well, okay, I actually have had one customer in my 17-plus years of cheesemongering tell me that he didn't like sheep cheese. I found that to be very odd, considering sheep cheese runs the gamut from mild and milky to caramel-sweet, to spicy and salty, and pretty much every flavor in between.
If one sheep cheese tastes bad to you, there are scores of other ones that will be completely different. Same with cows' milk cheeses: you can find nearly any flavor profile you want in at least one cow cheese in the world. (Generally, what differentiates sheep cheese from cow cheese is that the sheep cheese will have a sort of sweet-grass note when young, and a distinct lanolin richness when aged.)
But back to the goats.
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Goat cheese, like sheep and cow cheese, also spans almost the entire flavor spectrum of cheese.
Consider Crottin de Champcol (or, if you're lucky enough to be in France and can get the raw-milk version, Crottin de Chavignol). The fresh version of Crottin is mild, lemony, and bright. As Crottin ages, it becomes nutty and piquant.
Spanish favorite Monte Enebro is minerally and flinty, becoming spicy as it matures, and always with a distinct juniper note (enebro is “juniper” in Spanish).
Pantaleo, from Sardinia, is quite complex, with sweet, savory, herbal, and nutty notes. Bleu du Bocage, a very rare blue from France, is almost candy-sweet with spicy notes from the veining.
While all of these cheeses have some degree of “animal” or “barnyard” in their flavor profiles - and this is the reason many people don't like goat cheese - it's barely detectable. It's almost a suggestion and nothing more.
Its presence announces its animal provenance, but it certainly takes a backseat to all of the other dominant flavors I listed.
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So why do so many of those ubiquitous tubes of mushy, flaccid, extra-goaty cheeses taste so bad? What are the cheesemakers doing wrong? Why do their cheeses have lots of barnyard flavor while the cheeses I mentioned above have so little or none at all?
Those tubes of cheese are ostensibly “fresh,” but only in the sense of “not aged.”
The best time to get fresh cheese is in the spring through early autumn months, when the animals are grazing on the best that nature has to offer.
In the winter, most animals can't find enough to eat outdoors, so their milk is supported by a diet of hay and silage. This diet can result in milk that can make a fresh cheese a bit gummy in texture and certainly flat in flavor. It's fine for cooking but not the best choice for snacking.
So during the winter, do yourself a favor and choose aged goat cheeses.
But it gets worse.
Many things can go wrong when making cheese from any animal's milk. The milk has travelled too far, the milk is not made into cheese quickly enough, the milk hasn't been cooled properly, the milk has been handled too roughly (yes, jostling the milk will do terrible things to the fat molecules), the milk has been contaminated by animals' udders that are not kept clean.
Any of these circumstances can lead to “off” tastes in cheese, and in the case of goat cheese, the “off” taste is reminiscent of the smell of a wet goat.
There's also a sort of rural legend that warns against keeping a buck too close to a milking doe, as that will give her milk that strong, wet-goat flavor. The simple truth is this: fresh, properly handled goats' milk should taste sweeter than cows' milk but with a slightly lighter mouthfeel and a gentle grassiness. No poop. No wet goat.
The reason why those tubes of chèvre taste so bad is because nearly all of them are industrially made. In the hustle and bustle of a cheese factory, the milk often travels farther: it comes in on a truck that has bumped its way over goodness-knows-how-many rough roads, and it may sit for a bit, waiting for its turn in the cheesemaking vat.
And all that can lead to some pretty sad cheese.
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How unfair for the poor goats and their stewards! And pity the poor cheesemakers who are doing the right thing: using fresh milk from their own animals, handling the milk properly, using great care in the feeding and cleaning of their animals, and properly maintaining the milking and cheesemaking equipment!
So why should they - and their cheeses - be lumped together with inferior cheeses?
They shouldn't.
As a cheesemonger, it's my job to change people's minds and get them to go out on a limb and try a well-made goat cheese. Considering we live in Vermont (most of us, at least), where the terrain is ideal for goats - they don't need as much acreage as cows, they like scrubby little hills to climb on, their preferred dining plan is “the browse,” wherein they forage in the woods for tasty things - goats are quickly becoming a popular option for new and seasoned dairy farmers in this state, so it would do us all well to jump on the goat bandwagon.
Not only will we discover some sublime flavors, but we'll support our neighbors who are raising goats and making cheese from their milk.
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If you'd like to try some great Vermont goat cheeses, I recommend the wares from:
• And if you love caramel, try goat caramels from Big Picture Farm.
There are likely more makers of goat cheese popping up every day, and some makers are very small and sell only at your local farmers' market. So keep on the lookout, especially once spring arrives.
Happy cheesing!