Hard cheese, France
Last updated 14:24, Wednesday, 01 October 2008
Who cares about runny French Brie, salty Greek Feta or tasteless, bendy Dutch Gouda ... we Brits now produce some of the best and most varied cheeses in the world!
French president Charles de Gaulle famously remarked that no-one could be expected to govern a country where there were more than 246 kinds of cheese.
Well, we can boast 450 varieties of cheese made in the UK (no wonder Gordon Brown is struggling).
We’re a nation of cheese-lovers – Brits chomp through about 590,000 tonnes of cheese a year, equivalent to about 10kg per person per year.
As British Cheese Week starts today and British Food Fortnight swings into its second week, instead of buying a brick of New Zealand or Canadian cheddar or a tasteless triangle of spongey French stuff, why not try something English?
Cumbria is blessed with a range of cheesemakers, including the award-winning Lake District Cheese Company and Thornby Moor Dairy, Martin Gott at Holker Hall and Eric and Dianne Horn at Birdoswald.
They farm 112 acres of open and unspoilt land just above Hadrian’s Wall.
They have been making their organic Birdoswald cheese since 2002 and in that brief time its fans have spread across the UK and even into France!
Eric milks his 30 organic Ayrshires every morning at 6.30 and the unpasteurised milk goes to make his sweet-milk cheddar-style cheese with a light, tangy taste.
The recipe was brought to Ayrshire by Barbra Gilmour from Ireland in 1688.
Warm milk, straight from the cow, is hand-worked for up to five hours to produce a 20lb cloth-bound, mould-ripened cheese that is matured for up to six months.
It is made with vegetable rennet, so it is suitable for vegetarians.
Eric averages six 10 kilo cheeses a week and it is sold at farmer’s markets, Westmorland farmshop and select farmshops in north Cumbria.
Dianne said: “It sells itself now and we actually send quite a lot to France!
“We have had French people stay at our B&B who love it and French students who come in the summer who think it is wonderful and they take it back to France with them.
“The French make wonderful soft cheeses but are not right good at hard cheese.”
Despite the growing reputation of their cheese, the Horn’s have no intention of supplying supermarkets or major chains.
Dianne added: “We get quite a lot of emails from people who have stayed with us wanting to know where they can buy the cheese near their homes in the south and we tell them they have to come up here to this beautiful land to buy it.
“It is local food for local people – and a few in France!”
