Speciality Food Magazine -November/December 2025

DORSET BLUE VINNY Made to a more than 300-year-old recipe using milk from the farm’s own cows, milked just 80 yards from the dairy. Creamy, savoury and rich. dorsetblue.com CLAWSON FARMS 1912 ARTISAN STILTON PDO Blue Stilton, crafted with sustainable British milk from Clawson Farms’ member farmers. This blue delivers layers of flavour, an intense tanginess, and a gentle crumble. 1912.co.uk specialityfoodmagazine.com 37 anything too radical on our own brand.” Development of Clawson Farms’ 1912 label is ongoing too. “We’re balancing what Clawson Farms is renowned for – world champion cheese – testing the Gen Z market with a creamier Stilton to see what happens,” Bill explains. “We think if we can get the younger generation on that and Shropshire Blue, then they will, over time, migrate through the blue cheese category. We’re really excited about that.” THE CORNISH CHEESE CO CORNISH BLUE A mild, creamy, dense and buttery blue cheese with a gentle sweetness. Designed to be eaten young. cornishcheese.co.uk OXFORD CHEESE OXFORD BLUE A semi-hard, smooth cow’s milk blue with a mellow depth of flavour. oxfordcheese.co.uk businesses, and lowering their carbon footprint as a consumer, which is great news for British cheesemakers. Now more than ever, it’s important to protect our local economies, and if we can do more for the planet at the same time, that’s even better.” One of Britain’s newest cheeses, Pevensey Blue, is fast becoming a cheesemonger favourite, raved about by the likes of award-winning affineur and head of cheese at Rennet & Rind, Perry Wakeman. Pevensey Cheese was founded in 2020 by Martin and Hazel Tkalez, who wanted to get out of London to raise a family. Hazel comes from farming stock (in beef and lamb), and her parents just happened to live next to an organic dairy farm. There was an opportunity, Martin says, to transform two bays of an old barn at Hazel’s parents’ farm into cheesemaking facilities. And it wasn’t long before Martin and Hazel struck up a business plan with their neighbours, David and Marion. The couple had the ideal background to get started – Hazel in food sales and Martin having worked in retail at Neal’s Yard Dairy for 15 years. “We both love cheese,” he smiles. They settled on blue cheese because, “we love Stilton, it’s our favourite thing to eat,” says Martin, “and other people told us it’s really hard ot make a soft blue cheese. As they say, fools rush in where angels dare to tread. Lots of people told us not to make a soft blue!” Martin says they weren’t put off, trying to create, from the start, something with a buttery texture that looks beautiful and is complex. After five years they believe they’ve got the make right, crafting it daily in small batches using organic milk (delivered from only five minutes away) fromBritish pedigree Friesians, with 4-5% added Ayrshire milk which brings extra fat and creaminess to the make. Around 95% of the animals’ feed is from their farm, supplemented by organic rations. In warmer weather, the cows graze on the Pevensey Levels – something that’s encouraged by the Sussex Wildlife Trust, helping them to prevent the marshes becoming overgrown and improving the habitat for migratory birds, spiders and other insects. Crafting the cheese is a morning’s work (a process almost halved in time thanks to expert consultation), and the profile is perfectly suited, Martin says, to current tastes. “It’s soft, open textured, buttery and spreadable at 11 to 12 weeks. And it should be quite sweet. Even though we pasteurise, a lot of flavour comes from the milk. I think it tastes a bit like having a Dairy Milk or Fruit & Nut chocolate – that’s the profile. That malty chocolate taste.”