A Cheese Worth Waiting For

Yerba Santa Dairy

6850 Scotts Valley Road

Lakeport, Calif. 95453

(707) 263-8131

Billed open account, net 10 days

“It happens pretty quickly. You get two goats, and then there’s 16 goats. And they are so cute you can’t part with any of them. Pretty soon,” says Janis Eckert, “you’re making goat cheese.”

Eckert, her husband, Christopher Twohy, and their 75 goats live on a hilly, 73-acre farm three hours north of San Francisco in the Redwood Empire.

Their Yerba Santa Dairy is a labor of love; the couple both hold outside jobs. In their spare time they manage to milk the goats every day, make their goat cheese and market it (mainly to restaurants).

But you don’t have to eat out to sample the cheese. Yerba Santa’s signature cheese is a hard, well-aged chevre , a pungent wheel that arrives wrapped in white paper. It has a granular texture almost like asiago . It’s very fine with fruits and toasted nuts. It perks up pasta. And it is wonderful shaved over a salad.

If four pounds seems like a lot, relax: The longer the cheese sits, the better it gets. And at $24, plus $3.08 UPS charge, a four-pound wheel of aged chevre is a good buy.