Category: Events

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The Lidsdale – an aged semi-hard goat cheese

Our Lidsdale: Aged Goat Cheese from Jannei Goat Dairies

At Jannei Goat Dairies, we’ve been making goat cheese in Australia for over three decades. One of our most distinctive creations is the Lidsdale — a semi-hard aged goat cheese that has quietly become a favourite among those who appreciate cheese with depth and character.

Cheddar Chèvre - Jannei goat cheese

The Craft Behind the Lidsdale

Our cheesemaker, Neil Watson, has been developing and refining the Lidsdale for more than 30 years. Each wheel is made by hand, then matured for six to twelve months to bring out its natural sweetness and a lingering finish. As it ages, the flavour becomes more robust and complex — not unlike a well-aged red wine.

We don’t use fillers or preservatives in any of our cheeses. The flavour comes entirely from the milk, the culture, and time. Each wheel, typically two to three kilograms, is wrapped in muslin as it matures, then vacuum sealed to protect its subtle, evolving aroma.

A Cheesemaker’s Story

Neil’s dedication to the craft has been recognised within Australia’s cheesemaking community. At the Melbourne Specialty Cheesemakers Show in 2012, he received Champion Goat’s Cheese for his Buche Noir. The Lidsdale — previously known as Cheddar Chèvre (Goat) until 2016 — carries that same spirit of care and precision.

Serving Suggestions

We enjoy the Lidsdale best with fresh fruit, homemade jam, or simply on its own. It also pairs beautifully with a medium-bodied red wine or can be used to add richness to savoury dishes.

An Australian Goat Cheese with Character

For us, the Lidsdale represents the heart of what we do — slow, careful cheesemaking that lets natural flavours speak for themselves. It’s a reflection of the land, the milk, and the patience that goes into every wheel we make.

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Emirates Wolgan Valley invites Jannei to Showcase their Cheese

The Gates Opened for Jannei on Sunday the 17th.

We had a great time at the Emirates meeting Damien Brabender Head Chef and displaying our cheeses to the guests and associates at this small event.

It was great meeting the people that make the Emirates what it is and we where very encouraged by the partnership our product has created with them. The Wolgan Valley is a beautiful place for bush walks, picnic’s and recently Emerites has setup an exclusive retreat out their where you can relax be pampered and escape that busy city life.

 

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Open day picnic review

The Farm Picnic day went well.

The day was blustery and cool so we think that deterred people but the experience was still fun for those that came. We had lots of complements on the cheese being delicious.

Everyone enjoyed holding the baby Kids. The girls helped here and where great. The Boys helped on the farm trail and everyone helped get the farm ready so Wow! Spring cleaning all done!

The farm looks great even the wisteria is in flower, usually eaten by now by Crimson Rosella’s! It was a great trial run and we hope to develop the idea so more families know about it. Anyway check out the photos below on it when you get time and give us any suggestions or feed back.

If you have a group that wants to visit the farm please contact us via email or phone and organise a time. We would love to have you. You might be travelling past please drop in, call or email if you want make sure we don’t miss you!

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French guest at the farm, Ivan Larcher

Ivan Larcher and Neil Watson goat cheeseApril was a busy month for us. We had a French guest at the farm Ivan Larcher . Invited to Australia by the Australian Specialty Cheesemaker’s Association.

We jumped at the chance and invited him to Jannei when the option was offered . He was a great source of information for us and he helped us review what we are doing. We have lots of ideas to run by him. He helped us sort our ideas out because he could come from the outside and give us a fresh and experienced view point as he has seen many cheese makers in France and all over the world .

He described himself as a Cheese Tourist. We had Len from the Lithgow Mercury out to take this photo and he wrote a great article in our local rag. It was an informative time too we went to his lectures in Sydney. We have wanted to go to France to check out goat cheese -maybe one day we will, but in Ivan France came to us!

 

 

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Jannei goes to Melbourne!!!

After much preparation and arrangements getting cheese shipped out for delivery to the Australian Specialty Cheese Awards judging at Werribee for Friday the 24th of August and to the Cheese Show public tasting at Ormond Hall near Prahran Melbourne for the 25th August Neil and I (Janette) headed off to Melbourne for a three day stint !

We left frost and ice bitten Lidsdale ,Tim to care for the kidding goats and the Factory dormant awaiting our return . I had spent time preparing flyers and business cards and had used the” Wow” word as a prominent theme for the flyer . It was ironic because after the three days it was a WOW time we had…(and I will up date the flyer with more Wows ha!)

We had wow fun as we learnt to navigate the Tram, Bus and Train System with our Myki Cards sooo… exiting , and on a cheese level with another achievement for the Buche Noir which made for such a moral boost and excitement at the wards dinner in Fitzroy!

We stayed in a lovely apartment , had some date dinners together , did some valuable marketing talking to retail outlets, attended the Awards Dinner and had some well timed help from close family at a massively packed cheese show in which we where able to clear out most of the stock we took.

Gracing our stall apart from our super new pull up sign designed by Nick, our web site manager ,was our most recent trophy of the night before! We entered 7 cheese styles of which two achieved Gold awards in the soft curd section, the fresh curd and the Noir. The judges take the top 6 or so cheese in each category and give them a point score . This means the majority of cheese entered don’t know how they went at all unless they get a high score and even then it’s only if you get gold or win the section that you find out how you went.
As very small cheese makers we always find this difficult because we need to know how we are grading to be able to improve .

Luck has had it though that we do very well with our soft cheese. We had others in the hard cooked section, the marinated section, the textured section and the white mould section. People tasting on the Saturday loved our cheddar , agreed the fetta was a solid lower salt healthy cheese, devoured all the white moulds and approved of the exquisite curd and so on!
We pulled out cheese from sale stock to go down as we had no surplus at this time, to take, as it’s the end of winter and goats are only just kidding,, but it was well worth it!

We learnt a lot on the public cheese tasting day and while travelling around Melbourne . Its a great place because the small deli is still in demand and there we found lots of cheese and checked out what everyone else in our small industry of -farm made cheeses was doing . Our new slogan at the show on our sign was; “Quality from our farm to your home”! Which we hope you will agree it is. We spoke to business owners who where very keen to take on our cheese so I have lots of follow up to get on with! We found that Jannei still had what it takes and its given us that power boost we need, as being so small it often feels like you are up against too much competition.

Hope you enjoy the pictures , our news update and our cheese..
Cheers from Janette at Jannei Goat Dairy.

To read the full report click here and download the pdf!

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The Cheese Cake

Jannei - cheese cakeNeil recently turned 60 and to celebrate I made a cheese cake for him.

I have to say that not all of it is Jannei Cheese but most of it is… If you even fancy a cheese cake  for your event please give us a call and we might be able to fix you up.

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Spring? In the air?

Well here are the first photos as promised! The girls are kidding and they think its spring, even if the humans are seriously still shuddering when the sun goes under a cloud! But we guess they know best.
Jannei goat dairy - goats
These photos of a doe and her kids, was the third doe to  kid , the two kids on their own came the day before and at the stage of the photos we had six kids in total but since the sleuth photographer was freezing her butt capturing this doe just after kidding, there have been over a dozen mothers dropping  two a piece!.

The doe in the picture was busy licking away for 30minutes and didn’t allow one kid to suckle until both where ready, it was very interesting to watch. By the end of this afternoon Neil and I brought in six babies to the top pens. Two more does had kidded that meant Ten! Kids are brought in  to keep them out of the way of foxes and the cold night air. If you don’t bring them in the does could loose one to a fox as they don’t seem to be able to protect both kids at once!
Jannei - Australian goat cheese producers
The farm hand , Tim,  is busy every morning  now bringing in kids and taking does up to the bales ready to learn the routine. Kids and mums have to camp near the milking bales so that they can be monitored. Udders need checking and milking out and after 10 days or so the does are let out with the main herd During the day kids are kept safe in pens until the does come back  in the afternoon when they are penned and fed.

There are probably 30kids now!

Jannei Goat Dairy will soon be open for Spring Sales. Milk supplies will improve next week and whole sale orders will begin filling again. In September the Dairy opens for three days a week instead of the one day Monday through winter.

Jannei will be open for 8 months for  Friday’s, Saturday’s and Monday’s at this stage we are starting slow and as we go hope to get staff and structure in place for farm direct sales! We try to have the kids available for children to see and feed grass to and get a photo with during September to February.

Anyways…..
Watch this space for more photos and updates of the kids they look so cute!

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SYDNEY CHEESE AWARDS October 9, 2010 Gold Medal Winners

In recent news all three of our White mold cheese have now won a Gold at a cheese show! Jannei’s Miette took out he gold in Category 3 – Fresh Curd Matured at the Sydney Cheese Awards.

here’s a link to the website

Also our Bent Back Chèvre, Prairie Cream and Buche Noir all received gold at Melbourne Cheese Show.