“Getting to know you”

The UK has many well-known artisan makers, all rightly lauded as having earned their right to be in the spotlight. Such fame covers Montgomery Cheddar, Charles Martell and the famous Stinking Bishop, Keens Cheddar, Quicke’s, Lincolnshire Poacher, Yorkshire Blue, Appleby’s Cheshire, Kirkham’s Lancashire, Sparkenhoe Red Leicester, Gorwydd Caerphilly, Westcombe Cheddar and other artisan royalty. These are the national and even international bedrock of well-known brands and types.

Others should and must emerge to continue the legacy growth of great British and Irish cheese. The difference between success and failure is sometimes wafer thin, and in the UK there have been many casualties of those who didn’t quite make it.

Amongst those paying their dues for a long time and entitled to even further success must be the likes of Rosary Goats Cheese, a smooth and truly elegant piece of cheese craftsmanship, rounded, creamy and smooth.

At the northern extremities of England’s cheesemaking, the Northumberland Cheese Company has a whole range of cheese types, possibly too many, but their brilliant white goats cheese, Elsdon, is a real delight and rivals anything our Continental cousins can make.

The Bamford family’s Daylesford dairy is hardly unknown, but the semi-soft, washed-rind 10 week-aged organic Adelstrop is honeyed and creamy with a lingering delicate taste, reminiscent of Caerphilly in style, and may well become a favourite in the future.

A stalwart of this trade, with many generations of cheese making history, the redoubtable John Bourne hardly gets the recognition his fine cheese deserves. Famed for his classic Cheshire, aged 3-4 months, it is a national shame that our oldest recorded cheese is a shadow of what it once was as it is simply outstanding. Quite separate to classic white Cheshire, his creamy soft, almost Gorgonzola-like blue is a real gem.

From Ayrshire, Barwheys cheese from maker Tricia Bey is a hard unpasteurised cheese made from with milk from its own special herd of pedigree Ayrshire cattle. The cheese is wrapped in traditional cotton cloth and aged in wooden slats for 12–14 months, creating a creamy texture with a very slight crumble, a sharp taste and a hint of nuts and caramel.

From the rolling flatlands of Norfolk, a long time desert for cheesemaking, comes Fielding Cottage owned by Sam Steggles which produces various products using goat’s milk including some outstanding cheeses. Amongst his range there is the Norfolk Mardler, a waxed 8-week mature hard goats cheese, Ellingham Goats which is in the style of a feta, and of course the award-winning Wensum white goats cheese, a brie-style goats cheese with classic smooth, creamy and sticky interior with gentle tones from the goats milk.

Next for something a little different; Burts blue cheese made by Claire Burt – a pasteurised, handmade semi-soft blue which as it develops becomes rich and creamy with a distinctive blue character.