Yes, there’s cheese made in the Caribbean

By Sarah Greaves-Gabbadon
CJ Travel Editor

I’ve always found it surprising that despite the number of goats there are roaming the region, no Caribbean destination makes its own goat cheese. So on a trip to Barbados for Crop Over last I was pleased to learn that I was wrong.

Improbably, it was at Bliss, one of several fetes during the island’s rollicking harvest festival, that I met Andrea Power, whose company, Hatchman’s Cheeses, was one of the culinary vendors, serving flights of locally made cheese to hungry revelers.

“I’ve always loved cheese, and my Dad taught me how to make it when I was young.” Power told me, shouting over strains of soca filling the air. “So when I couldn’t find the types of cheeses I wanted on sale here, I just decided to make them myself.”

And for the last two years she’s been doing just that, crafting artisanal goat cheese from milk provided by well-known St. Andrew goat farmer Mrs Hoad in a modest 10’ x 20’ space where her largest piece of equipment, she tells me with pride, is a 10-gallon pot.

But what deliciousness comes from that pot! Plain and herbed goat cheese, and my favorite, goat cheese spiked with tangy sorrel, which she served that evening formed into petite balls and rolled in a Shirley biscuit crust. Heaven!

Power also makes a rosemary goat cheddar; Bajan cow’s milk brie; and a Scotch Bonnet cow’s milk cheese, which is top of my list to try next time I’m on island. And while Hatchman’s Cheeses are currently sold exclusively at Carlton and Emerald city supermarkets and Massy SuperCentre, non-Bajan cheese lovers can take heart: Power will be launching an online fromagerie in 2017.