About 20 minutes outside of McLaren Vale and on the way to Victor Harbour is the Hindmarsh Valley Dairy company, which operates one of the largest goat dairy herds in Australia. It’s on the goat farm that they produce a range of goat’s milk and diary products as well as chevon (premium goat meat).

During my visit to the region I dropped in with Hindmarsh Valley Dairy’s own Denise Riches who showed me how to milk goats for their range of products. Each day the herd of milking goats are brought in early in the morning and milked. On average each goats produces about 2.5lt per day and the milking process takes about 12-15 minutes per goat.

Apart from their range of products, The Hindmarsh Valley Dairy produce their fresh goat milk which I found unusually tastes slightly sweeter than cows milk. Having not tasted fresh goat milk before, I was expecting the goat milk to have a slightly sour taste which is generally associated with Chevre (the common name for goat cheese). Denise tells me, that goat milk is particularly beneficial to people who are unable to tolerate cow’s milk.

Hindmarsh Valley Dairy product range includes;

• Goat Meat: Chevon & Capretto
• Goat Milk
• Cottage Cheese
• Marinated Fetta
• Salted Fetta
• Chevre
• Caprino Fresco Goats Curd
• Chevrotin
• Chevre de Provence
• Geiskase - camenbert style goat cheese

Hindmarsh Valley Dairy distributes their range of goat products throughout Australia, for a list of stockists, call Denise on 08 8552 6704 or email jnkdpr@bigpond.com