Page 9 - Our Blog

28th February 2012
Sue Lock

I arrived at Ram Hall just in time to pull on a very long glove and plunge my arm into the partly separated curds and whey for a gentle stir.  Cheese making in Berkswell is very hands-on.  Powdered lamb’s rennet is added to the warm raw milk, all of which comes from the farm’s flock of 650 Friesland and Friesland-Devon cross ewes.  The milk is heated, stirred and cut before Julie and her team mould the cheese by hand into colanders, giving the cheese its characteristic shape and patterning.

The freshly moulded cheeses stay in the dairy where they are turned every day for six days, with dry salt sprinkled once on each side.

After lunch, Berkswell’s Head Cheesemaker, Linda Dutch, showed us what happens next.  After their week in the dairy, the young cheeses are washed and coated with plasticote – a yellow substance with the consistency of custard, which is applied to the cheese with a sponge and forms a coating which enables the cheese to breath during

January is always a quiet time in the cheese business, as waistlines expand and belts tighten.  For those of us  who haven’t started a fad diet, or are still working our way through the remains of the, Stilton we can start to turn our heads to the next ‘cheesey’ event: Valentine’s Day.
Cheese may not be your first thought when it comes to Valentine’s Day but lovers have been giving cheese as a gift for over 500 years.

It all started during England’s occupation of France during the Hundred Years’ War (1337 – 1453).  In the region of Neufchatel, French dairy maids, enamoured by their English occupiers, started to make the local cheese into a heart shape.  And so the ubiquitous and original heart-shaped cheese was born - all  soft, white, bloomy rind and creamy interior.
Since then cheese-makers across the globe have taken to making heart-shaped cheeses for Valentine’s Day.  
At The Fine Cheese Co. we’ve come up with three fantastic British cheeses to give to a loved one this Valentine’s