Goats Work Hard!

Ok, well, maybe they have it pretty good - hang out all day eating tasty grass and tin cans, and romping around smelling all goaty...and in fact, it is only the male goats that smell at all. Fun story about that another night.

When I was at the cheese shop yesterday, I learned a fun fact about goat cheese. It takes up to three goats three days to produce enough milk to make one Chabichon cheese - one 3" tall, 2" wide little cylinder of cheesy heaven. Crazy. If you think about it, it does make some sense. The process of cheese making is designed to remove excess moisture (whey) from the milk as part of the preservation process. Depending on the goat, they can make up to 2 liters of milk/day. 6 liters of milk isn't that much in the cheese business (a Comte can use up to 140 gallons of milk for one 90 pound cheese!). So, part of the tangy-ness in goat cheese comes from the fact that some of the milk has been sitting in the fridge for two days. You keep milk a lot longer than that, so don't get all grossed out... Kind of interesting, eh?

All the goat cheeses I shared on Sunday night were gobbled right up, and they really did help change the way our taste buds perceived some of those tangy Sav Blancs. My favorite quote of the evening - "The next time someone offers me a glass of wine, I'll have to ask them if they have any cheese!"

Cheese dreams everyone!