Goot Essa Gift Basket Winner

Yesterday we had a Q and A with John Esh of Goot Essa cheese (check it out here if you missed it).  And we’ve got the gift basket winner for you below. Thanks to everyone who entered!

Goot Essa makes small batch cheeses and pairs them with items like apple butter spread, crackers, prosciutto, fudge and more in their wide array of gift baskets. In yesterday’s Q & A I asked John to explain a bit about how they operate:

John Esh: We work with five different farm families for our milk supply. The three sheep farms supply milk. One farms milks about 40 sheep and two of them milk 25 sheep. The goat farm milks about 60 goats.

My family has the cows, and we milk about 65 cows. It generally is a family effort in our herd. Our sons: John, Jonas, Jacob, and Melvin all help me with the milking at some level depending on the schedule of what else is going on. During haymaking our two oldest grandsons Jake Allen and Arlan help with the milking as well.

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It’s a family and community operation. You can even stop in and visit at their farm in Centre County, PA. Here’s a comment on that from reader David Treusch:

We learned of the Goot Essa company from earlier email link to article.

My wife and I visited the Esh farm last month. Absolutely beautiful farm, spotless production facility was amazing (particularly enjoyed samples trays). Employees were all very friendly and outgoing to answer all our questions. Tour of the cheese cave was really cool (slight pun intended!).

The quality of the cheeses is definitely at a gourmet level. We took care of our family Christmas shopping. Also, purchased a considerable sample of cheeses to enjoy ourselves!

Highly recommend the Goot Essa products, and in-person farm visit if you are in the area.

“Cheese Lover’s Dream” gift basket winner

Thank you to everyone who took the time to enter a comment. I used random.org to draw a winner of the Cheese Lover’s Dream gift basket from your comments.

Once again here are the cheeses and condiments included in a red gift box:

Cheeses:

8 oz. Mountain Valley Sharp Cheddar
8 oz. Old German Weissa Kase
6 oz. Der Weichen Gehl

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Condiments:

4 oz. Sweet & Spicy Dipping Mustard
1.5 oz. Autumn Dawn Apple Butter
1.5 oz. Nittany Valley Pure Honey

Yum. So the winner is:

Comment #106, Becky!

Congrats Becky, just send your delivery address to me at ewesner[at]gmail[dot]com.

How to order

If you’d like a nice treat with a great story behind it for the upcoming Christmas/New Year period, you can check out Goot Essa’s gift basket selection here. They have dozens of different combinations in sizes from small to large so you are apt to find something that fits the bill.

They also have a subscription service where you get a selection of cheeses each month. You can also view their full range of individual cow, sheep, and goat cheese blocks here. This is Der Alpen Kase:

A thanks to Goot Essa for supporting this site and I hope you’ll consider their cheese for your holiday and beyond 😀👍