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A
workshop on sheep's cheese
The
cheesemakers sitting around the central table
Five years ago I didn’t eat cheese. Now I love it.
It’s strange how tastes can change, but it seems that tastes that
are quite hard to acquire are often the most enduring ones.
So I was delighted to be invited to a sheep’s cheese
workshop, held by Neal’s Yard Dairy at the Monmouth Coffee Shop in
Borough Market. The event brought together several of the UK’s
leading proponents of ewe’s milk cheese to discuss their produce
with an attentive audience made up largely of Neal’s Yard employees.
It was a remarkable evening: while I’m just an
interested learner when it comes to cheese, the discussions and
commentary gave me an insight into issues involved in making serious
cheese. This was a pretty hardcore cheese-nut evening. Many of the
issues under discussion were reassuringly scientific in nature, though
– familiar territory for me – because cheese making is essentially
practical microbiology.
The evening was compered (in a very loose way) by
Randolph Hodgson, who stimulated the bulk of the discussion by asking
appropriate questions. For those who don’t know him, he’s the dude
behind Neal’s Yard. Jancis Robinson says that Randolph ‘has done more in my opinion for the quality and integrity
of British food than all the chefs on television and those who have
appeared in the honours lists’.
We had two wines with the cheese, which were selected
by Randolph’s son, Raef, who is currently working in the wine trade
at The Winery in London.
First, a German Riesling that was crisp and fresh, with a nice
texture. It was dry and quite broad with melon and lemony notes. Then
we had a white Burgundy (a Bourgogne Blanc 2004) that was smooth,
rich, balanced with nothing sticking out and a nice texture. Lemony
and nutty. Both worked well but not spectacularly with the cheeses. I
apologise for not having more specific details of the wines – my
attention was on the cheese for this occasion.
Randolph
Hodgson (far right), next to his son Raef and a pile of cheeses
Frances Percival, a food writer with an interest in
wine and cheese matching, points out that salt and rinds are a
challenge for wine matching. Rind fights with any wine you put with
it. The only real option is to blast past it with something seriously
sweet. Tannic reds react negatively with cheeses and end up tasting
metallic and thin. Randolph suggests that wine and cheese don’t
really go very well together, but suggests out that beer is great.
[Having said this, the wines disappear pretty quickly, suggesting that
they aren’t an awful match.]
Here, I’m reproducing my notes from the evening. I
realize that this is a bit geeky, but I wanted to capture some of the
spirit of the evening, which was a group of passionate producers with
a dedication to making authentic, characterful cheeses, and who were
happy to share their knowledge with an attentive audience. This sort
of open-minded pursuit of excellence is, to me, very exciting.
Wigmore
Anne and Wendy Wigmore make two cheeses: Spenwood and
Wigmore. The first is hard, the second semi-soft. They’ve been going
for 20 years and buy in all their milk. They also make cow’s milk
cheese (Waterloo).
The Wigmore we
try is soft and smooth with nice tangy acidity. It’s quite broad
with a lovely smooth texture and a bit of smokiness. Good rind and a
grassy, herby finish.
Anne says this is a nice cheese, and that it has
improved since they changed the size: now it matures more evenly. With
larger cheeses they were getting a more acidic centre, and this acid
was developing because the brine (used to salt the cheese, controlling
microbial growth) didn’t get through to the centre.
Might the cheese improve? The risk is that the rind
might dry out. They use a penicillium mould for a rind that doesn’t
get too thick. It’s a washed curd cheese, which is a way of reducing
the acidity in the vat.
Spenwood
is
semi-hard with lovely warm, rich nutty flavours. Quite sweet with
crumbly but smooth texture. Nice balance here: it’s almost a bit
cakey. Delicious.
Anne says that this is a bit too young. She thinks it
might be January’s cheese, because they had difficulty getting hold
of sheep’s milk in November and December, so everything made in
these months became Wigmore. She thinks that a nutty flavour will come
through after six months. Randolph says it’s a shame to cut it
early, but it’s still a lovely cheese.
Freeze dried starter culture is used here. One of the
problems in dairies is the presence of bacteriophages (specialized
viruses that attack bacteria) that can knock out certain strains of
bacteria. As a result, the sachets of freeze-dried bacteria typically
have a mix of strains. It’s necessary to do TA (titratable acidity)
titrations to get a consistent acid increase in the cheese. Some
people use pH meters, but these have been found to be variable in
practice – many of the producers describe them as useless because
there’s too much variation in the readings.
Flower
Marie
Kevin and Alison Blunt make Golden Crust (from their
own goat’s milk) and Flower Marie from bought-in sheep’s milk,
which has been made since 1992.
The Flower Marie we try is soft, rich, fat and tangy.
It’s quite mellow: smooth and broad with some nuttiness and some
tang.
Kevin thinks it is not breaking down under the rind
enough – it’s perhaps a bit too salty for him. This cheese is made
with either fresh or frozen milk that is allowed to coagulate for 14
h, ready for ladling the next morning. ‘I like the texture’, he
says. ‘This will break down a bit more as it matures. I don’t like
them to get really gooey as if it breaks down under the rind too much
you get soapy flavours’.
Randolph asked whether Kevin had considered using dry
salting as an alternative to brine, but Kevin replied that he hasn’t
with sheep’s cheese’. In response to a question, most of the
cheesemakers present said that they brined, but some also did dry
salting.
Little
Riding
Dave Bartlett is from Wooton Organic and makes Little
Riding, along with James Bartlett, Tamsin Rampling and Hannah Burr.
They have 220 ewes, of which they milk 100.
It’s soft, fat and a bit grainy with some salt adding
balance. Broad and quite rich. The rind isn’t too thick.
‘We get some grey mould on the rind, but we would
like to get on top of this’, says Dave. They are trying to get the
environment right for the rind to grow well, and recently changed the
recipe. They are using Geotrichum
rather than Penicillium, a
mould that doesn’t give thick white rinds. There is some discussion
about whether thick white rinds are an English style, and the general
conclusion is that they aren’t. There’s also some discussion about
humidity for rind growth, along with some fairly technical talk about
rinds in general.
Berkswell
Linda Dutch makes Berkswell cheese with the Fletcher
family from 500 ewes that they milk. It’s a hand-pressed hard
cheese.
We tried two examples, both made on the same day.
Berkswell ‘C’ 26.2.07. Vegetable rennet. Hard.
Nice, smooth, a bit crumbly with some tang. Quite broad textured.
Frutier, with more acid.
Berkswell ‘D’ 26.2.07. Animal rennet (lamb). A bit
harder with less richness, and a smoother, firmer texture. Quite
savoury, with broad flavours. Deeper and richer.
Randolph pointed out that he can almost always taste
the difference between cheeses made with vegetable and animal rennet.
The vegetable rennet gives cheeses that are spikier, spritzier and
fruitier; the animal rennet makes smoother cheeses.
Animal rennet comes from the stomachs of young
slaughtered animals. The young females are kept, but there is no use
for the young males. The Fletchers had 250 male lambs that they
didn’t need this year. Some are sold to city farms, but the rest
have to be slaughtered, and as they don’t even weigh 3 kilos, there
is no market for them. The dairy industry is criticized for this, but
animal welfare standards are high: unless animals are happy they
won’t milk well. As an example of the effort required to keep your
animals happy and healthy, from December to March, they worked at
least 13 hour days with just one weekend off.
Crockhamdale
Victoria Tagg makes Crockhamdale from bought in milk, which is based
on old Wensleydale recipe. She can’t find enough milk.
It’s semi-hard. Nice and tangy with a lovely grainy
texture. Dry and quite firm, with a sheepy tang that reminds me of
Manchego. Grassy and spicy, too.
Victoria says that this is young. She likes it young in
the spring and summer when it is milder and quite moist. Often it is
more crumbly than this, she adds. This one is 6–8 weeks old. In the
early days the cheese was quite open on the outside, so they had to
get a better press. They then ended up making 32 cheeses in different
ways to find a way to prevent the cracking: the key seemed to be the
strength used putting it into the mould.
The recipe was created by James Aldrich, who was a
cheese retailer who had in a previous life been a scaffolder. He was
responsible for lots of cheese recipes, but didn’t want the drudgery
of making them day in and out.
St
James
Made by Martin Gott, the St James we try is smooth, rich, intense and
salty. It’s tangy and a bit stinky. Delicious with some pungent
acidity. A rich style that’s smooth, soft and quite striking.
Unfortunately, Martin had to kill his flock and this
cheese was made from bought-in milk. It’s the first cheese of the
season: thick and acid. The next lot is thinner and less acid.
All these cheeses are available from Neal’s Yard (www.nealsyarddairy.co.uk).
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