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Featured Cheese of the Week: Lakes Edge

3/12/2012

This week, we’re delighted to feature one of our department’s favorite cheeses.  We’re not qualifying this cheese by saying it’s one of our favorite local cheeses, or goat cheeses, or bloomy-rind cheeses (although it is all of these things); we’re saying one of our favorite cheeses.  Lake’s Edge, named after the shapes and patterns of stone along Lake Champlain and crafted by owners/cheesemakers Greg Bernhardt and Hannah Sessions at Blue Ledge Farm in Salisbury,VT, is a soft-ripened pasteurized goat’s milk cheese which is coated and veined with ash.  It is made seasonally from the milk of their mixed herd of Alpine and LaMancha goats.  As the bloomy rind develops during the cheese’s three-to-four-week aging, the layer of ash lying underneath gives this cheese a distinct and beautiful blue hue, but don’t be fooled: this is not a blue cheese!  It is a wheel of creamy, tart, goat-y, sweet, mineral-y perfection with a dense center, fluid mid-layer, and flexible rind.  Although being semi-aged, it maintains a unique fresh flavor and is complemented by a light red wine such as a Pinot Noir.