Culture Magazine

BEGINNINGS 2024 culturecheesemag.com 41 Welsh Cheeses You Should Know If the only Welsh cheese you've heard of is Caerphilly, you're missing out. Here are just a handful of the phenomenal cheeses Wales is known for: Black Sheep may look like many of Caws Cenarth's wax-coated truckles, but this one stands out in more ways than one. Made with sheep's milk, it boasts a rich, creamy texture and subtly nutty character with slight lanolin funk. It's no surprise that, despite being a relative newcomer to the cheese-scape, it's already earned accolades, including a Gold at the 2019 Royal Welsh Show. Perl Las means "blue pearl" in Welsh, and it's the perfect moniker for this bloomy-rind blue made by Caws Cenarth on the island of Anglesey. Smooth and mild with delicate, yet lingering, bitter blue character, it's available in multiple sizes and shapes, including 200g (7-ounce) mini truckles that make a perfect cheese board centerpiece. John Savage-Onstwedder is a household name among Welsh turophiles. The country's longest-established artisan cheesemaker, Savage-Onstwedder is also Britain's most highly awarded. While his Caws Teifi is perhaps best- known for its organic gouda-style cheeses, don't sleep on Saval, a Caerphilly-based washed-rind cheese with a soft, buttery center and a rich, brothy funk. You'd be forgiven for thinking Hafod is a cheddar, but despite its similarities, it's a traditional Welsh hard cheese made on Bwlchwemen Fawr, the country's longest certified-organic dairy farm. It's delightfully intense with sweet, buttery, nutty notes, traits indicative of the Swiss training of the late Dougal Campbell, the recipe's inventor. Abaty Brie is an organic Brie-style cheese f rom Aberystwyth in West Wales and one of the only raw-milk Bries made in the UK. A relative newcomer, the cheese is rich and velvety with a slight citrus flair. It's sure to please any fans of French Brie de Meaux. co-founded by Simon Stott, Farmers Weekly's 2011 Sheep Farmer of the Year. At first, she started with a few 20-liter (5 gallon) buckets of milk, making cheese at the local food technology center. Soon after, she moved to Caws Rhyd Y Delyn dairy on the isle of Anglesey, which was shared with Menai Wyn Jones, the producer of Môn Las blue cheese. But it wasn't long before she purchased the church building in 2018. After several years of renovations, which were further delayed by the pandemic, she finally moved into the space in March 2023. Today, Rimes sources her milk locally from two farmers who graze their Lleyn sheep on the grassy Llŷn, a large peninsula that extends into the Irish Sea. Her lactic Brefu Bach, inspired in part by the P'tits Bibis she learned to make alongside Lefroc, is the star of her offerings, beloved across Wales and the UK thanks in large part to a collaboration with Neal's Yard Dairy born from a "cheeky" impromptu visit to their Covent Garden branch years ago. "I sort of just turned up on spec at Neal's Yard, dug into my rucksack, pulled out a bit of the sort of Welsh cheese I'd been making over there in France," she recalls. "I plonked it on the counter, and said, 'What do you think of that, then?'" They found her efforts at the time a bit "farm-yardy," she recalls, but once she'd perfected the little lactic cheese's recipe, they began selling it to Londoners for £11.25 (about $12.15) a pop. Brefu Bach has broad appeal, not only because of its light, fluffy texture and fresh, creamy flavor, but also because it's vegetarian. It requires just a touch of thistle rennet to achieve a lovely, soft curd. But the rennet, which Rimes sources from French company Coquard, has become far more difficult to acquire since Brexit—a change that has motivated her to plant a patch of cardoon thistles behind the church in hopes to produce her own. And this isn't her only plan for the future. e Final Frontier For some time, Rimes has had her heart set on perfecting the sort of cheese she imagines would have traditionally been made in Northern Wales: a long-aged hard cheese like Caerphilly. But despite years of trying, it's proven difficult to master. "I've come to the conclusion that with just straight sheep's milk, it's a right faff," she says. And given the history of the region it makes sense. With the nineteenth century advent of railways, she explains, "it looks as if people went over entirely to milking cows, because you could get your milk down to London, and you could make butter." She posits that people would have continued milking sheep small- scale, "bulking out" the skim milk with sheep's milk to make what she imagines would have been "a decent cheese." And she's eager to make it herself—if she can source the milk. Welsh Black cattle are some of the oldest in Britain, descended from pre-Roman breeds and known for their sturdiness, perfect for the rough mountain and hilly terrain. But these days, Rimes is faced with a similar quandary to the one she encountered with her Brefu Bach. Most Welsh Blacks are bred for meat; however, Rimes has her sights set on persuading someone to milk them. "It may not work, of course! It may be an absolute total disaster," she says merrily. If it is, there's no doubt she'll "why not" her way into a solution. c "I sort of just turned up on spec at Neal's Yard, dug into my rucksack, pulled out a bit of the sort of Welsh cheese I'd been making over there in France. I plonked it on the counter, and said 'What do you think of that, then?'"

• Cover