Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaledition.com/i/1476966
30 culturecheesemag.com I N N OVAT I O N 202 2 are using most grazing, our cows are outside, the spring calving cows are spending all of their milking time on pasture, the autumn calving cows, they come in for the winter, five, six weeks, to avoid the worst of the weather. So, we've got more of those grass-fed flavors. But also, because the fats are shorter chain, once you get cows grazing on grass, you get a sort of lusciousness of flavor, there's a lovely melt-in-your-mouth, softer feel. All of the traditional cheddar makers, we all use these wonderful heritage starters, but there's a library of about 400, and we tend to have our own ones that we use from that library, and they give quite distinctive flavors. Jamie Montgomery has trained his customers that it's fine if it's got mold in it [laughs]. And we have not managed to do that! So, we tend to be much more careful. There's lots of steps you can take to reduce the amount of internal mold, the blueing, the bruising, if you like. So, our cheese will tend to be quite low on bruising and that's because we spend three days in the press and we double cloth, and all of that slightly changes the character of our cheese. It's so exciting to see all the makers who are using very similar methods, because then when you taste each one, you're picking up on very subtle differences from the milk. MQ: Well, and also, you get such a difference in flavor from the heart of the cheese and halfway back and under the rind. It's really celebrating that, that tells the story of the cheese. It's like a book. Or like the trunk of a tree! How the middle of the trunk of a tree is younger. MQ: Yeah! And driven by that loss of moisture through the cloths. You got some press recently for speaking out about how Brexit was affecting farmers in the UK. How have your exports been affected by all that? MQ: Certainly exports to Europe, we were doing them ourselves. We'd talk to some people and they'd give us an order and we would just put it on a lorry and off it went, where now it feels like we can't do that. We need to work with other people, bigger companies who've got access to all the paperwork. I mean Brexit is just an enormous bit of self-harm, in my view, that Britain has done. I found myself being very kind of, really, really sad about that, 'cause to me we're just part of Europe. I found it completely heartbreaking. I cried about it! No, literally, when I heard that Beethoven Ninth Symphony, the Ode to Joy, which is the Flavour Mapping Illustrations: Provided by Mary Quicke from her website: www.quickes.co.uk