Surfing Goats

If Maui is the breadbasket of Hawai‘i, then Upcountry is its salad of organic endive and papaya with strips of grass-fed beef. Everything from coffee beans to orchids spring from the island’s most climatologically diverse region. Located on the lower slopes of Haleakala in the town of Kula, Surfing Goat Dairy has been spreading the gospel of chèvre cheese since 2000 with 16 award-winning organic gourmet goat’s milk cheeses. Eva Kafsack makes them all by hand onsite. She learned the craft from European masters when she and co-owner/husband, Thomas, still lived in Germany. The company’s two dozen varieties of lightly salted chèvre are favored by chefs at Maui’s leading hotels including the Four Seasons and Ritz Carlton, Kapalua, and select restaurants such as Flatbread, a hip Pa‘ia pizzeria.