Winner of 'Gold' at the World Cheese Awards 2018
St. Jude is made by Julie Cheyney in Suffolk, from the milk of the same Montbeliarde herd that provides the milk for Jonny Crickmore’s Baron Bigod.
Julie first started making cheese in 2005, when she and Stacey Hedges created Tunworth. After only one year, the pair were delighted to become Supreme Champion at the British Cheese Awards: a justly deserved accolade but a very rare one in such a young cheese-making business.
Julie and Stacey parted ways, and, in 2012, Julie set up her own dairy in Hampshire where she began to make St. Jude.
Julie is so concerned about the quality of her milk that, when she heard on a Radio 4 programme about the work that Jonny Crickmore was doing at Fen Farm, she had to investigate further. Once Julie had got to know more about the Crickmores, she took the decision to move her business and life from Hampshire to Suffolk, in pursuit of the best milk that she could find.
Julie uses the milk, still warm, from the first cows into the dairy parlour, to be transformed into this delicate, rich, dense and creamy cheese. She believes that cheese should be made slowly and gently, and so every step in the process of producing this lactic set cheese is performed by hand. The cheese is worth the wait: a thin, wrinkled coat, sometimes with a delicate cream line underneath, encases the rich core. The taste is delicate but complex, with a lingering finish.
* This cheese is made with flavour rather than appearance as the paramount consideration. Because the coat is kept deliberately thin, other moulds can appear. The creamy coloured surface is created by geotrichum and the blue, green and grey spots that can often appear are other wild penicillium. They are perfectly safe to eat and do not mar the flavour of the cheese.
