British cheese please

All the mainstream supermarkets sell British cheese from some of our best producers but I am always left disappointed. You can get Appleby’s farmhouse cheddar, Blackstick’s blue, Colston Bassett stilton and Kirkham’s Lancashire in any town with a Tesco Superstore or Sainsbury’s Local. But how they keep our favourite artisan products so often ruins them and does not allow their unique qualities to come to the fore.

Independent retailers can beat the supermarkets every time even when they feasibly sell the same cheese from the same producer. The big boys might sell it cheaper, but they are incapable of keeping cheese in prime condition and so the same product can taste entirely different. Artisan cheese produced for supermarkets might have their usual branding and waxed paper on the outside but underneath lurks cling film or a vacuum-pack which makes the cheese sweat and negatively affects the flavour. It is then chilled at very low temperatures in bright lights and in a dry environment 24/7, until a consumer puts it in their basket, keeps it incorrectly at home and then eats it straight from the fridge far too cold.

This is in huge contrast to the care taken by independent cheese mongers who can advise their customers, and where the contrast in taste is markedly different. Cheese is wrapped in waxed cheese paper only, which achieves the best possible balance between maintaining humidity around the cheese and allowing it to breathe. They can advise customers to keep cut pieces of cheese in the fridge to slow the growth of mould on their cut surfaces, but to keep it in its waxed paper inside a Tupperware box, (the container provides a micro climate that helps to prevent the cheese from drying out and absorbing flavours from other foods in the fridge).

Customers can be told how to serve their cheese. Straight from the fridge means it’s too cold and this can make it taste bland, but an hour or two before eating brings out the flavour. Then, there are the stories to tell:

The Appleby family have been making Cheshire cheese in Shropshire since 1952. Appleby's Cheshire Hard is made with cow's milk and has a minerally taste and a citric tang. Out of the fridge for an hour before serving you can fully appreciate its dry initial feel and then it's silky and succulent taste. This is the last raw-milk, clothbound Cheshire in England, matured for around for four months. 

Explaining these stories connects the customer to the producer and makes them really appreciate the value of the product and just why it may look the same in Waitrose, but how the lack of care ruins the taste and texture.

My other recommendations for an English cheeseboard would be the smooth texture of Cerney goat’s milk cheese made in Gloucestershire, a well-deserved “Supreme Champion” at the British Cheese Awards. Sprinkled with oak ash and sea salt on the outside giving it a distinctive look, it has a mild, citrusy flavour on the inside, but matured for two or three weeks and its flavour becomes even richer. Cropwell Bishop stilton from Nottinghamshire with its grey, wrinkly crust, creamy yellow inside and an even spread of blue-green veins. And finally, Hafod cheddar made by Rob Howard in Ceredigion, which is complex with a long finish, smoother and softer than many cheddars and takes your taste buds in all sorts of directions. These are the things our customers need to know!

Sue Nelson