Five Star Accommodation - Goat Style

Went to the first of our portes-ouvertes today. It's somewhere we go to regularly for our goat's cheese, so already know it well. Vazereau at La Roche-Clermault is on the other side of the Vienne to Cravant. To get there we drive through Chinon and then turn left and cross over the river. Vazereau is a family business and successful. We could easily go to one of the big supermarkets and buy their cheese from there. Vazereau supply them all. But one of the things we really enjoy and prefer doing, is buying directly from the producer.  Fresh local produce is a well-established feature of our food chain and we like to support wherever and whenever possible by visiting the premises and meeting the people involved. It's a great experience.

Normally when we visit Vazereau it's just the shop that's open. They have at least thirty different

cheeses that are produced on site, as well as yoghurts and crème fraîche. For a porte-ouverte the whole site at Vazereau is open, offering guided tours round the goat pens, into the milking parlours and the processing parlours. Not sure how many goats Vazereau have in all, but being a perfect day, meaning sunshine, there were goats indoors and outdoors. By 10.30am which is when we arrived, the place was buzzing. The shop was packed. There were tastings of new flavours including one with echalottes, which was absolutely delicious. Fouèes were on offer and another producer from Vouvray was there with tastings of fizzy and white and rosè wines.  We're back in Chinon for lunch, so didn't get involved with food and wine tastings this time. Instead having bought a few things from the shop, we went for a walk round the goat pens which were under cover out of the sunshine.

All the goats looked in amazingly good condition. Most were totally dedicated to the business of eating, which on one occasion included my clothes. I got too caught up taking photos to notice that one of the goats had taken a liking to my jacket. Until I felt a violent tugging and looked down to see to the corner of my jacket disappearing into a hungry goat's mouth. Why it couldn't content itself with it's own food of which there was loads, I don't know.
I got my jacket back - unharmed.