Appleby's Cheshire

background

Since 1952, the Appleby family have been making Cheshire cheese at their dairy farm, which is now being run by the third generation. Theirs is the last raw milk, clothbound, farmhouse Cheshire in England: quite something when you consider there were once two or three thousand Cheshire producers and that Cheshire, not Cheddar, played the most central role in the heritage of British cheese. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Cheshire dominated the London market, thanks to the proliferation of shipping routes between the northwest and the capital. Only with the industrialisation of cheesemaking and the introduction of cheap, factory-made American imports did Cheddar supplant Cheshire as the most widely known – and consumed – cheese in the country, and the number of farmhouse producers of this once renowned British territorial start to steadily decline.

our work with this cheese

Our work with the Applebys began in the 1980s when the family began to seek alternative markets for their unwaxed, raw-milk cheese. Unlike the supermarkets, which value the reduction in weight loss and ease of production line cutting offered by wax coatings, Neal's Yard Dairy appreciates above all else the distinctive texture and flavour that result from binding the cheese in cloth. 

We visit the farm once a month on our selection trips to the north, and taste through all the batches of cheese produced since the previous visit, assessing them by texture, colour and flavour. In our own way, we're continuing the work of the 'cheese factors' who selected Cheshire for the London market back in the 17th and 18th centuries – but while the product they were selecting was a hard, resilient cheese suitable for long sea voyages, today we're looking for a bright cheese with a juicy acidity and a characteristic crumble. It's a cheese that we will sell when between the ages of three to five months, when its character is fully formed but still milky fresh.

pairing suggestion

Melt Cheshire cheese on top of bacon while frying or grilling then sandwich between slices of thick, buttered bread.