Cayuga Blue - Cheese Course

The mere thought of blue cheese evokes a surge of flavor memories -- sweet caramel, piquant peppers and earthy aromas. Favorites such as Gorgonzola Piccante, Rogue River Blue, Fourme d'Ambert and Vaquero all come to mind. But Cayuga Blue from Lively Run Goat Dairy eschews the standard flavor profile of a blue cheese. Instead, it's downright subdued with an herbaceous grassy taste reminiscent of a goat's milk tomme-style cheese, similar to Twig Farm's Goat Tomme.

The blue veins interestingly seem to function as a slightly spicy "topping" to this already flavorful cheese. The delicate goat's milk comes across first before you're hit with the mild tang of blue molds. Aged for two months, the cheese develops a firm dry texture that becomes soft and velvety on the palate. Altogether, it makes for a subtle blue, toned down with a rich, creamy taste.

At the Lively Run Goat Farm in the Finger Lakes region of New York, meticulous care of the several different goat breeds (Alpine, Nubian, Saanen and South African Boer breeds, and even crossbreeds) results in the flavorful aromatic raw milk used to create the cheese. In addition to the milk from her own farm, Susanne Messmer mixes goat's milk from five other sustainable farms in the area with hers to produce Cayuga Blue.

The cheese's moniker comes from the Finger Lakes. "Cayuga Lake often shows an almost green-blue color, very much like the color of the type of mold spores we are using in the production of our cheese," Messmer says. "The Finger Lakes are very deep, glacially formed lakes. Like its namesake, the unique flavor of our Cayuga can be described as deep, multidimensional."

The quality of the milk is key when it comes to Cayuga Blue. Like all artisan cheeses, Cayuga Blue is completely natural with no artificial ingredients, preservatives or food coloring. "Every batch of milk is sampled and tested at a local dairy research laboratory for bacteria count (freshness and cleanliness of the milk) and somatic cell count (health of the animals), as well as the state-required testing for antibiotics" Messmer says. "All five farms have agreed to using antibiotics only if the goat's health is at stake, at which time the animal's milk is discarded until testing shows no presence of antibiotics."

Since 1995, Messmer has been making blue cheeses. After three years of experimenting with different cultures, temperatures and molds, she hit upon this unique cheese. Although supply runs low during January and February due to the seasonal shortage of goat's milk, the cheese is available year-round. It can be purchased for $15 per pound nation-wide online from Lively Run Goat Dairy.