I do not mean to preference German, Swiss, and Austrian cheeses of late, it just so happens that they are consistently on strong discount at our local cheese stand. I will also freely admit that I am on a long-term hunt for a fitting replacement for Cypress Grove's Midnight Moon, still an easy top five cheese. When I see that clean white paste I get my hopes up and... well let's just say a fitting replacement eludes me. So here I am, at the cheese stand, and joy of joys an aged goat cheese is on sale! How was the Ziegenperle? Let us see.
Origin: Switzerland
Milk: Goat, not raw and not pasteurized but heated
Affinage: 8-10 weeks
Notes: The wheel is regularly rubbed down in wine yeast during the aging process. So... let's hear it for wine yeast!
Thoughts: This cheese confuses me. Although it is high in butterfat the paste is chalky, salty, and, well, chalky. Chalk on chalk. Chalk all the way down. You do get some notes of hay and a hint of sweet cream, but the overwhelming flavor from the goat's milk is the zing and bite of the unpasteurized milk. This cheese attacks strong from the start and keeps your mouth puckered through to the end. Honestly, this is a little off putting by itself. The solution? Don't eat it by itself. The cheese breaks apart into an avalanche of small crumbles when you so much as look at it, and indeed it could make a fitting topping for pasta or roasted vegetables such is the strength and intensity of the flavor. It needs at least a hardy bread to match it, but eaten right it is quite good. A little goes a long way!
I am admittedly not very well acquainted with the particulars of Swiss German, so it may be that I'm missing something in the translation... but Goat Pearl is a strange thing to name your cheese, is it not? Even Pearl of the Goat or the Pearly Goat... I'm just not sure those are better.
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