Glad news from Nantwich, which hosted the International Cheese awards this week, attracting a record 5,000 entries – more than half of which were produced in the UK. It’s comforting to think that, however nasty Brexit gets, with more than 700 different varieties of British cheese to choose from, the future of the toastie is secure. (Then again, Theresa May may justifiably envy Charles de Gaulle, who complained about the difficulties of governing a country with a mere 246.)
While the practically minded might point out that our dominance at the awards could be down to the obvious difficulties of transporting something so pungent across international borders, we are indisputably living in a golden age for British cheese. Indeed, last month saw the launch of a more exclusive competition: Ollie Lloyd set up the Great British Cheese awards because he believes that Britain “is in the midst of a cheese revolution” – and the enthusiasm of fellow “cheeseheads” seems to back him up. More than 3,000 votes have been cast online in the first fortnight.
Demand is not just strong at home: our cheeses are increasingly fashionable abroad, with exports to France last year up 20% from 2014. But it wasn’t so long ago that the cross-channel cheese trade only went one way, and with good reason. Though cheesemaking was probably introduced to both countries by the Romans, the industrial revolution was not kind to British food culture. Farmhouses were replaced by factories, a process that reached its peak during the second world war, when shortages of milk and labour meant the production of many traditional cheeses was outlawed in favour of a handful of hard varieties. The rise of the supermarkets in the decades that followed did not encourage their revival, and it wasn’t until the 1970s, as part of a wider culinary awakening, that Britons began to rediscover the joy of real cheese.
These days you can get anything from Hampshire mozzarella to Highland brie, but for me, you can’t beat the classics, so ubiquitous as to be almost overlooked in the rush for the new and exotic. The jury may still be out as to whether the UK can ever make a goat cheese as aggressively capric as the sun-baked crottins of Provence, or even a really amazing emmental, but no foreign cheddar can touch a proper west country farmhouse variety for rich, nutty complexity, while my own favourite, stilton, is rightly considered one of the three kings of blue – along with French roquefort and Italian gorgonzola. Jenny Linford, author of the book Great British Cheeses, makes the case for Graham Kirkham’s raw-milk Lancashire as “a very gentle cheese with a real taste of the dairy to it and a distinctive crumbly texture … a pleasure to eat”; Michelin-starred chef Frances Atkins enjoys her local Wensleydale with a slice of fruitcake.
That’s not to say there aren’t new cheeses worthy of discovery. Lloyd is a fan of Londonshire, “a really gooey white cheese” from Tottenham, of all places, while Jasmine Reeves, from royal cheesemonger Paxton & Whitfield’s Stratford-upon-Avon shop, recommends Rollright, a reblochon-style cheese from Oxfordshire that has only been in production since last March, but has already picked up two awards.
The supreme champion in Nantwich, however, was a Dutch gouda. Perhaps those pesky Europeans still have their uses after all.
