When you have a farm on Salt Spring Island, you may as well have goats. When you have goats, you might as well make cheese.
And if you are David and Nancy Wood, your cheese is simply fabulous.
Since 1996, the Woods have owned and operated the Salt Spring Island Cheese Company, making handmade goat and sheep cheeses. Although mostly known for their chevre, they also make several other types of goat cheeses.
Each Saturday, from April through October, the Salt Spring Island Saturday Market flourishes with hippies catering to yuppies with all manner of sumptuous edibles. The Woods introduced their cheese though that market. In exchange, visitors have introduced themselves to the Salt Spring Island Cheese farm. Visitors are welcome to see the animals and enjoy the scenery. You can watch the cheese being made through viewing windows and take a self-guided tour through the cheese-making process.
Blue Juliette is a blue version of their Juliette, a simple Camembert made from pasteurized goats milk. Blue Juliette is produced using goats milk purchased from farms in and around the Salt Spring Island area.
Add a little penicillium roqueforti in to your penicillium camembertii, throw in a little goat and a Gulf Island, and this is what happens.
Goats milk Camemberts are all the rage these days; a trend to be applauded in goat-positives, such as myself.
Blue Juliette has a distinctive appearance. The rind is laced with edible mould, half blue and half white, imparting a mottled texture and distinct blue-green colour. This cheese is not pierced like a Stilton; the mould is introduced externally and stays on the outside of the cheese. As Blue Juliette is essentially a Camembert, it is not aged long.
My little wedge of Salt Spring Island Cheese Company Blue Juliette is just on its best before date, which, as I hope we have all learned, is the best time to eat a surface ripened cheese. Go and buy those marked down bries! See it as saying best on date, not best before.
Now cutting... The mould is on the rind only, not into the paste. It smells faintly of goat.
The interior is extremely unctuous and creamy looking. Its a little frightening to behold, being the wettest cheese I have dealt with. It almost fell apart while I was cutting it.
And now for the tasting...This cheese is everything at once. Its goaty! Its a ripe Camembert! No, its a blue cheese! Its salty and melted, strong, mild. Holy Hannah, this is a cheese.
The texture is completely over the top crazy good. Its downright gooey, cloying your mouth. Its begging to spread it on something, but I am a purist and thus am resisting.
Blue Juliette, you are certainly my slice of cheese!
Willow Yamauchi ate 100 cheeses in 100 days and lived to write about it. Follow more of her cheesy exploits at twitter.com/willow72.
