by Benjamin Roberts
This past April, I spent 3 days traveling through the north of England with our friends at Neal’s Yard Dairy in London. You can catch up on that journey HERE. The very last stop on our three-day cheese bacchanalia was at Hawkstone Abbey Farm and with Paul and Sarah Appleby,t and their five children.
Breakfast was the imperative before cheese tasting and we crowded around the kitchen table while Paul and Sarah’s two teenage boys prepared bacon sandwiches, Cheshire toasties, and coffee with raw milk from the farm. They are an incredibly warm family with a wonderful, wry sense of humor. I could have listened to their stories of farm mishaps and practical jokes all day whilst consuming my weight in grilled cheese and sweet cream butter from the farm.
You can see their cheesemaking room from the kitchen. Just right out the window, not more than two feet from where we ate our breakfast. No cheese was being made that day, so instead, we set off straight to the cheese aging room to select a batch of Cheshire for Neal’s Yard Dairy to carry. Instead of trying to encapsulate what happens on their farm I will share their absolutely perfect text from their website:
“The farm has undergone a conversion towards a more regenerative and sustainable way of farming. Each cloth bound Cheshire encapsulates a moment in time – the soil, the traditional grass pastures, the gentle cows, the weather, the season. The fresh, raw milk is the master ingredient, to which we add traditional cultures, rennet, salt from the Cheshire Plains and the extract of the annatto seed, which gives our coloured Cheshire it’s warm sunrise colour. These time capsules are matured in old barns with napoleonic timbers. The provenance and flora of our natural surroundings give our Appleby’s cheeses a flavour that is totally unique. ”
The future of British Territorial cheeses like Appleby’s is exciting. Small traditional farmhouse dairies making delicious, thought-provoking cheeses from a herd of grazing animals that give people pleasure as they eat would be a marvelous legacy for farmers and cheesemakers over the centuries.
Almost every batch of Cheshire we tried was magnificent. Pleasurable to eat, without being overly fussy. Rich and lactic with a bold finish. We tried batch after batch and then, towards the end, there was one sample that caused all of us to smile immediately--an absolute stunner of a cheese. “I want that one” I blurted out and I was so excited that I grabbed the wheel of cheese and marched out into the dreary morning, triumphant and demanding that someone take my picture holding it.
One other note on the Appleby’s is that they have worked very hard to convert their herd from being “inside” cows to “outside” cows. Instead of spending their days in the barn, these diverse, athletic cows now spend much of the year out on pasture. This has only increased the deliciousness of this marvelous cheese.
It’s been 7 weeks since I tasted that Cheshire and our batch just arrived this morning. I can’t wait for that taste that brings me back to the magical morning spent with my generous hosts, exceptional cheese, and pretty cute cows.