If you like Bucheron, the log-shaped French goat cheese with the bloomy rind, you will probably enjoy Caña de Cabra, a Spanish cheese made in a similar style.
According to Michele Buster, the Spanish cheese's importer, no one in Spain was making the soft-ripened style of goat cheese until Lorenzo Abellan went to France to learn the method and began producing Bucheron-style cheese in Jumilla, a wine region south of Valencia.
I think Caña de Cabra has more character than Bucheron. Made with pasteurized goat's milk from farms in the Jumilla area, it is shaped like a thick log roughly 2 1/2 inches in diameter and weighing a little more than 2 pounds. Over its three weeks of aging at the dairy, it develops a soft coat of desirable white mold.
Those molds help break down the interior as the cheese matures further, working progressively from the outside in, so a ripe log will show some softening under the rind. As this internal transformation advances, the cheese becomes stronger in aroma and flavor. A glance at that layer under the rind in a cut log can tell you a lot about the cheese's maturity, but always ask for a sample.
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