Haystack Mountain Goat Dairy

It all began because I had been working in a great Denver kitchen, Aubergine Cafe and had been using Haystack’s delicious fresh chèvre. I knew I was ready to try my hand at something new so I went up to Niwot, back when the farm was still near Haystack Mountain that the farm took its name from, and told Jim Schott that I wanted to come and learn to make goat cheese from him. A year later I was pushing to start aging cheeses and developing new items to add to the already successful fresh chèvre and feta. I found a box of Pouligny-Saint-Pierre forms in a barn and started making small batches in a small kettle as we built an appropriate space to ripen them. We made it our own and not a straight copy of the French model by using a blend of surface moulds and dusting them with grape ash as a nod to tradition, and named it the Haystack Peak. 2004 Award winner at the annual American Cheese Society Development of Queso de Mano followed soon afterwards being our take on the Spanish Garrotxa, which was our first real foray into natural rind cheeses that require significant aging and which also won ACS accolades. Then research on a washed rind cheese began that became Redcloud under the guidance of my apprentice Jackie who has really made a name for herself as a masterful cheese maker.