Ragstone, Neal's Yard Creamery

I eat a lot of goat's milk cheese - from the fresh, acidic curd made nearby in the Windrush Valley, perfect for either sweet or savoury dishes; to the ashed French (and increasingly produced English varieties too) cheeses such as St Maure and Valencay, with creamy textures and lemony flavours; to harder, aged cheeses such as the washed rind Rachel from Somerset (she's sweet, nutty and pretty complex).

The past week, I have been eating a lot of an especially delicious goat's milk cheese called Ragstone.
This cheese is made on a hill in the Golden Valley in Herefordshire, by acclaimed cheesemaker, Charlie Westhead of Neal's Yard Creamery, who produces the cheese using raw milk from a local goat dairy farm. I recently visited Charlie at the creamery to see how he made his cheeses, and his eco-energy farm.
All the heating for the creamery (and creameries, even small scale ones, are warm places) comes from a wood fired boiler which Charlie stokes with wood from the adjacent farm.
A large amount of the energy needed for both the creamery and the farmhouse is created from a small on-site windmill, perfect for the windy hillside the creamery is situated on.

The creamery was lovely, the cheese delicious, the eco-energy inspiring, but it was the view which was most impressive. As Charlie and his cheesemaker, Haydn stir warm milk, ladle delicate curds, and brine the drained cheeses, they look out across verdant hillside pastures, steep sided valleys, and across this remote corner of Herefordshire.   

The creamery produces a good few dairy products: the best Crème fraiche I have eaten, Greek-style yoghurt (both set and stirred), a cream-enriched cow's milk cheese called Finn, which is thick, mushroomy and indulgent, and three goat's milk cheeses, Dorstone, Perroche and Ragstone. 
Dorstone has an ashed rind, and is light and moussey in texture, with nutty, yet fresh and acidic tang.
Perroche is very fresh, a drained, lactic curd, with a moist, smooth texture and clean, milky flavours.
But it is Ragstone which has interested me so much over the past few days. I have been eating the cheese both in its young stage of barely having a rind to speak of, with a light geotrichum coating and a firm, clean white interior, and in its full maturity. Ragstone grown up has a fluffy white penicillium coating, with a rich, creamy breakdown beneath, whilst retaining the firmer, lemony core.
Although most of my greedy Ragstone eating involved the cheese all on its own, I could not resist cooking with a little.
The cheese comes as a 200g log, so was ideal for slicing into discs. I warmed the slices in the oven, not to brown the cheese, or even melt it really, just to begin to soften.
Meanwhile, I fried some lardons of local Pancetta until crispy, before tossing them with a few bitter leaves (small mustard greens, rocket, mizuna), a little sherry vinegar and the smallest trickle of rapeseed oil. Slices of warm Ragstone sat on top of the little salad, with a few Mulberries scattered over.
Find Ragstone at Neal's Yard Dairy, Paxton and Whitfield, Bath Fine Cheese, Daylesford and Trethowan's Dairy shop in Bristol.