Blessed Are The Cheesemakers

(Warning do not read further if lactose intolerant)

So after two years of blipping it’s time for me to come out and admit, I love cheese, I mean I really love cheese. First signs of this were as a toddler when refrigerated slabs of cheese would be found “mysteriously” reduced in size with a dental imprint readily indentifying the culprit. I now use a knife and have long given up the pretence of denial.

(As an aside as I write this it may make sense of the tales my dad would tell of children being locked in fridges by accident as being repeated to try and put me off my habit – I guess he saw me as a rival in the cheese and chocolate stand off).

Anyway, on the way up to the Lakes on Monday we called in on a new shop for me and met Andy Swinscoe pictured here and his cheeses. I was in cheese lovers heaven, and in Andy found someone who not only loves cheese but lives it. Having learned his trade and also developed his skills as a cheese affinage (I hadn’t a clue either but it’s something to do with the maturing of cheese) what struck me was not only the really fine cheeses available but how Andy in describing them described the very people who made them and something distinctive regarding their crafting of the cheese which connected me with the farmer and producer in a way that is all too often lost in our fast and mass produced food culture.

One of the cheeses which I enjoyed this week was Tantais. Gabi and Soizic have gone for the “high on the hill with a lonely goatherd” life at 1850m in the Savoie region in France, their 100 goats graze on rich mountain herbs and they milk them every night. Making the milk into cheese is a way of keeping the milk as it is too remote to sell as milk. The cheese is simply awesome.
Andy has been to meet them and if DM(who is eying it up at the moment)pinches any she’s going to meet them too and will be left there.

I popped in again today to give Andy some Grasmere Gingerbread and buy some more cheese and fell in love with another cheese – but that’s another blip for another day.

Blessed are the cheesemakers. Monty Python – Life of Brian.