“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world,” says Hugh Grant’s character at the beginning of the film Love Actually, “I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport.” Well, we here at Edible East End prefer to treat ourselves to a piece of cheese instead. And as we learned in Eileen M. Duffy’s 2006 article on Peconic’s own Catapano Dairy, we just so happen to live a stone’s throw away from the farm that, according to the American Cheese Society, produces the best chèvre cheese in the country. Try to be gloomy with the state of the world now!
“In 2003,” writes Duffy, “the Catapano’s bought an existing farm, fulfilling Karen’s passion for animals and Michael’s curiosity about making cheese. What started out as a hobby with 25 to 30 goats soon took on a life of its own. By the next year, after Michael took courses with some of the best cheesemakers in the state and Karen researched raising and keeping goats, the farm was profitable and their products were selling out.”
So successful were the Catapano’s that, to keep up with demand, they actually had to move. The new facility, completed in the Spring of 2006, not only doubled their production, but also provided the workspace to create skin care products from the farm’s own fresh goat milk.
And at Catapano Dairy, it seems, freshness is king. ‘”We always sell within days,’ said Michael. ‘No more than a week. If it’s aged more than that it will have a different taste.'”
Would you like to taste some more? You can read Eileen M. Duffy’s entire article here.
