By Marcella Wright, ACS CCP™
While opening cheese counters for Murray’s Cheese, I fell in love with the award-winning cheeses made by Pat Morford and her daughters at River’s Edge Chevre in Oregon.
Pat has owned goats most of her life and made cheese for herself and family from a young age. In 1988 she moved to Logsden, Oregon and bought twelve acres which she named “Three Ring Farm”. Five years later, she began buying dairy equipment and got “serious” about making cheese to sell. Construction of River’s Edge Chevre began in 2002; it was completed and licensed in 2005, and cheese-making began. Since then the cheese has been winning multiple awards including at ACS, ADGA, Good Food Awards and World Championship Cheese Contest.
First up is Siltcoos, a not-quite round disc dusted with ash, covered with surface bloom and topped with a fern frond grown locally. Named after a lake on the Oregon Coast, Siltcoos tastes clean and delicate with just a whiff of the goaty tang you would expect when young. The paste is dense and as it ages it becomes creamier and develops a nice spicy finish. Siltcoos has won Best of Show twice at American Dairy Goat Association Cheese Competition. You’ll dazzle your guests serving this on a cheese plate. Add a little Kelly’s Jelly Marionero Jam and they’ll be swooning.
Wine Pairing: Oregon Pinot Grigio.
Beer Pairing: Weissbock.
Up In Smoke is a fresh chevre wrapped in smoked maple leaves and then spritzed with bourbon to add even more smoldering smokiness to the taste of this award-winning delicacy. What a delight; the tang of the chevre blends perfectly with the smoke and the bourbon. It’s creamy and crumbly at the same time; leaving a lingering taste on the palate. It comes in little quarter pound disks; just the right size for snacking or adding to a cheese board.
Spirit Pairing: How about bourbon?
The third cheese from River’s Edge is Cape Foulweather, a surfaced-ripened pyramid of cheese sprinkled with ash to inhibit the growth of the bad bacteria and encourage the growth of the good stuff as it ages. Cape Foulweather’s namesake is a 500 foot outcropping on the Southern Oregon Coast; sighted and named by Captain Cook on one of his journeys before he ran “afoul” with the Natives of Hawaii. The one I tasted was young with a firm paste, smooth and dense with a pleasant tang. I enjoyed it on a plain cracker letting nothing get in the way of relishing its citrus taste.
Wine Pairing: Champagne is the perfect pairing for this cheese.
To learn more about Pat and her “Cheese Journey”, please check out my recent Q&A with her. It’s part of my 2015 Q&A series with more than 100 Cheese Professionals.
Please visit my website for “all things cheese”.
All photos are copyright 2015 to River’s Edge Chevre and used with their permission.
Posted May 14, 2015