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H J Errington
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LANARK BLUE is the famous Scottish mould ripened cheese, sometimes described as ‘Scotland’s Roquefort’. It is hand made in a farm-house
creamery from unpasteurised ewes’ milk.
Our sheep graze hillsides a thousand feet above sea level, overlooking the valley of the upper Clyde.
Although made to an ancient recipe LANARK BLUE is rigorously tested
in our own laboratory at every stage of making. The highest levels of
hygiene are maintained in the milking parlour and cheeserooms.
Please note that cheese made at different times of the year will vary slightly as the ewes’ milk is affected by seasonal changes in their diet.
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Scotland’s Blue Cheese
Dunsyre Blue is a mould ripened, hand made cheese (sister to Lanark Blue, the famous ewes’ milk cheese), made from the unpasteurised milk sourced from neighbouring Kirklands Farm at Dunsyre.
The high pastures of the Upper Clyde Valley are often cold and windswept, but the light loam soils grow good swards of wild clover, timothy and other
hardy grasses.
Because this district is distant from large towns, cheesemaking was traditionally practised on farms as a method of using surplus summer milk.
170 years ago, Sir Walter Scott wrote of the blue cheese of these parts:
“we have had the pleasure of eating Scotch cheese ... as good as Stilton,
and taken for it.”
We collect the milk for Dunsyre Blue early in the morning from Swaites Farm,
and transport it directly to our cheese vats, where it is warmed, and the process of fermentation begins. The basic recipe has changed little since Sir Walter Scott’s day.
When it comes to hygiene, however, our practices are completely different from those of our cheese-making forebears!
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Scotland’s New Cheese !
MAISIE’S KEBBUCK
“But now the supper crowns their simple board ...
... the dame brings forth in complimental mood,
to grace the lad her weel hained KEBBUCK fell,
an aft he’s pressed an aft he calls it guid;
the frugal wife, garrulous will tell
how ’twas a towmond auld sin’ lint was in the bell.”
(from the Cotters’ Saturday night, by Robert Burns.)
KEBBUCK is, of course, the old Scots word for cheese, and Maisie is my mother-in-law. A couple of years ago, she asked me to think of making a white cheese, as she was not fond of blue cheese. So it was only right to name this new cheese after her.
What we have tried to do is to make the sort of cheese which were made on farms in Scotland before the Cheddar techniques arrived in the 18th century. Last month we were encouraged by a letter from a lady in Lancashire, who wrote: “I particularly enjoyed “Maisie’s Kebbuck” which is reminiscent of the farm cheese my mother used to buy in Aberdeenshire more years ago than I care to remember; I hope your new cheese proves to be as successful as your others”.
We use raw (of course!) cow’s milk, vegetable rennet, we don’t press the cheese, and the rind is an entirely natural growth. The maturing process takes about 3 months.
Try this new cheese and see if you like it as much as Maisie does!
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For more information, visit:
http://www.lanarkblue.com
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