Just annouced: Tolpuddle have been awarded ‘Gold’ for their fresh goat milk with a score of: 18.33 (Class 100: Milk) at the 2016 Sydney Royal Cheese & Dairy Produce Show.
There’s a quiet strength to Melissa Jacka that comes through in her actions and her words. She’s a cheesemaker, one of the new generation of farmers who have turned their back on the city for a new life in the country, working hard to make artisan food. The former health sector human relations specialist now works with husband Donovan’s new business Tolpuddle Goat Cheese and Farm Food, based on their historic 50ha farm at Tarrawingee. ‘Donovan is the milker,’ she says. He milks 21 goats every morning before he goes off to his day job. ‘We share the philosophy that if we get it right in the dairy we’ll get it right in the cheesery.’
Melissa is meticulous in the way she handles the milk. She explains that the fat in goat’s milk is particularly delicate and that sloshing the milk about can cause ‘those strong goaty favours’. She carries the fresh milk in 10-litre buckets from the dairy and carefully pours it into the batch pasteuriser. The Jackas prefer to use a slower and lower temperature pasteurisation to protect the integrity of the milk. Some of this pasteurised milk is bottled and sold. Cultures are added to the rest of the milk and left to ferment for 24 to 48 hours.
Melissa drains and lightly salts the curds to make a fresh and tangy soft curd called fromage frais. Some curds are drained further and rolled into a smooth and tasty chevre log. Melissa also make a cheese called Marinated Gem, smooth and creamy cubes of cheese sold in a jar with extra virgin olive oil and herbs. Other batches of cheese are made with different cultures that give the cheese rich mushroomy aromas, wrinkled skin and creamy interior. This curd she gently scoops into perforated plastic tubes called hoops from which the liquid whey drains out. These curds are left to mature into delicious little cheeses, Tolpuddle’s signature product, named Great Alpine Road.
Tolpuddle Cheese is served at the Mountain View Hotel, Whitfield, and Provenance at Beechworch, and is sold at Snow Road Produce in Milawa and Ducky’s Murdoch Rd Butchery in Wangaratta. The Jackas also do the Farmers’ Market circuit selling at Wangaratta, Beechworth, Bright, Mansfield and Coburg markets. Plans are afoot to turn the 1850s stone former farmhouse that houses the cheesery into a farm gate sometime next year. ‘But we are in no rush,’ says Melissa. ‘All good things take time.’ Like their cheese.
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