the cheese blog

Golden Cross

I also made a visit to the Neal’s Yard Dairy store in Borough Market. Unfortunately, it was a Saturday and pretty nice (e.g., it hadn’t rained in 15 minutes) so the Market and Neal’s Yard were quite crowded. However, the queue to get into the store was only a couple of minutes and there were samples of cheeses being given out to those in the line. Since I had already stocked up at La Fromagerie, I wasn’t going to be buying a lot, but there were two cheeses on my list that I wanted to try. One of those was Golden Cross.

Golden Cross is an unpasteurised goats milk made by Greenacres Farm, near Lewes, Sussex. The cheese is formed into logs which is coated in ash (which you can see slightly in the photos) that is then aged, where it develops a soft, white bloomy rind. The interior is semi-soft and mostly white,  a bit off-white at the edge. The texture is dense, slightly chalky, but pretty smooth.

The taste is typical goat milk; fresh, slightly tangy, a little bit of brine, florally, and slightly citrusy. Overall, this was quite an addictive cheese. It tasted familiar, yet the freshness of the milk and the complexity led me to finish half a log in one sitting, without really realising I had just eaten that much!