Products
Fairview Farm Cheeses (South Africa)
Our famous tower and herd of good natured white goats are a familiar sight to visitors at Fairview. For over 25 years Fairview's dairy goats have supplied milk for the making of a wide variety of soft goats’ milk cheeses that have a distinctive local flavour. Today we are South Africa's largest producer of specialty cheeses. Goat's cheese is not only delicious to eat, but more easily digestible than cow's milk due to the smaller fat globules it contains. Goat's milk is also lower in fat (3.4% butterfat).
Our Saanan goats, originally from the Swiss Saanan valley, but now bred and reared on the farm, are milked twice daily over a 300-day lactation period. We milk about 400 does, whose average milk yield is 4 litres each. To assist milk production, the does are on a carefully monitored feeding regime, grazing on pastures and supplemented by a balanced ration specially developed for Fairview. Because goats are seasonal breeders, there is a three-month period each year when goat's milk is not available, so we introduced cow's milk cheeses to supplement the range. Because of its superior quality, only milk from Jersey cows is used at Fairview. We use approximately 15 000 litres of Jersey milk in a day. High butterfat (4.4%) and protein levels (3.7%) give a natural yellow colour to cheeses like Brie, Camembert and blues. Strict temperature regimes are enforced in cheese making.
Our milk is collected and transported at 4-5°C and held in storage tanks at 2-4°C. Automatic stirrers keep the temperature constant and the fat in solution. The milk is then clarified to remove any impurities and pasteurised at 75°C for 15 seconds. We process it all into cheese within 24 hours. All Fairview cheeses are made with non-animal rennet and are kosher and Halaal.
