Goat's Cheeses

Goat's Cheeses
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A Cheat's Guide to Goat's Cheeses

Brush up on your chèvres with our quick guide to the best known goat's cheeses around the world.

France

Loire/Centre

  • St Maure de Touraine: 15cm logs, grey with wrinkly rind.
  • Selles-sur-Cher: 7cm disks, grey and black wrinkly rind.
  • Valençay: 7cm high pyramids, grey wrinkly rind.
  • Crottin de Chavignol: 60-100g stumpy cylinders, white when young, shading to brown when aged.

Bourgogne

  • Bouton de Culotte: Tiny buttons shading from white, via grey to orange-brown with age.
  • Charolais: 7cm high cylinders, cream-coloured to reddish brown.

Midi-Pyrénées

  • Cabécou de Rocamadour: The AOC version of a Cabécou (Occitan for ‘small goat’s cheese’). 5cm disks, shading from cream to orange with blue flecks.
  • Picadou: Cabécou wrapped in walnut leaves, sprayed with eau-de-vie de prune (plum fruit distillate) and matured in an airless container. Fierce.

Provence

  • Buchette de Manon: 10cm thin logs, set on a thin strip of wood, with a scattering of sarriette (winter savoury).
  • Banon à la Feulle: 6cm disks wrapped in a chestnut leaf.

England

  • Dorstone: 8cm cylinders, black and white, occasional flecks of blue-green.
  • Harbourne Blue: A rare blue goat’s cheese: 20cm diameter wheels, rindless.

Holland

  • Wyngaard Goat Gouda: Large round edged wheels, white with a shading of pink.

Ireland

  • Killeen Goat Gouda: Large round-edged wheels, light tan.

Scotland

  • Blackmount: 8cm tall black pyramids. Peppery, salty, intense goat notes.

Spain

  • Garrotxa: 15cm rounds, light to dark grey.
  • Olavidia: 12cm squares with white mould rind and olive-stone ash strip in the centre of the cheese.
Ned Palmer
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