As September is slowly drawing to a close (and it’s pouring with rain here in Pangbourne) I thought it would be a good time to send out a newsletter! It’s been a really busy month with two overseas trips which I will talk about later in a bit more detail but first I wanted to share my personal big news… Those of you that read my newsletters each month will know that I am a total curd nerd! I love being totally immersed in the world of cheese and I enjoy learning as much as I can about it. I decided back in January to apply to take my Certified Cheese Professional (CCP) exam with the American Cheese Society. To qualify even just to take the exam you have to have worked in the dairy industry for a minimum of 4000 hours and then you apply to see if you get a spot. The exam can then either be done in person in the US or (as I did) online. Both are sat at the same time so at 6pm on a July evening I took the test. Even this was complicated as my sister had invited us to the O2 to see the Killers that evening – so we booked into the hotel that is next to the arena and I sat my exam whilst Ali and my sister & brother-in-law had dinner and watched Travis as the warm-up act! The exam is 3 hours long and there are 150 questions whilst being monitored via webcam to prevent cheating. It was intense but I finally heard last week that I’d passed! Only 6 other Brits have ever become CCPs so I was really chuffed!

But back to our travels. We booked to go to Prague thinking we’d get some September sunshine… the worst floods in Central Europe put pay to that idea. It was wet and windy but it’s such a beautiful city that we still had a great time. Unsurprisingly we had to visit a cheese shop whilst we were there and so we set out to find a couple but they’d closed down and then we stumbled across Ráj sýrů, which is hidden away in the city. We got chatting to the cheesemonger and learnt that he worked for a while in London for Paxton & Whitfields so we knew a lot of the same people (the cheese world is surprisingly tiny!). The Czech cheese scene isn’t great – the most famous cheese, Olomoucké tvarůžky PGI, is soft and smelly (not one for the faint hearted!) Cheese aside, I would definitely recommend Prague for a weekend break, the historical part of the city is amazing and the stained glass windows in the St Vitus Cathedral are exquisite (the Rose Window is in the picture above).

We then headed off to Leeuwarden for a family wedding. Leeuwarden is in Friesland, in the north of the Netherlands, where Friesian cows come from. We spent the morning looking around the city and came across a food market where there were 4 different cheese stalls. As you’d expect it was wall to wall Gouda – all sorts of different ages, milks, flavours… There are also 2 specialist cheese shops in the city which I dragged Ali into, and the cheesemongers were just so friendly. The cheese world is such an inclusive, friendly place. It amazed me that a very small city could sustain 2 cheese shops as well as 4 market stalls but all were very busy and the Dutch do love their cheese. The wedding itself was lovely (in Dutch so we couldn’t understand a word) but the happy couple looked totally radiant. All in all two very different weekends but both equally fantastic.

But back to the cheesy world of Pangbourne. Our guest cheeses this month have been extremely popular, in particular the Fellstone from Kirkby Lonsdale, whereas I’m really looking forward to the Mayfield from East Sussex, which is making an appearance in October. It has been really great to showcase some different cheeses and a lot of our customers have varied from their usual purchases but the true essence of a guest is that they have to depart at the end of their allotted time, much to some people’s disappointment.

We have been celebrating with 2 of our fabulous cheesemakers. Mike Smales, who makes our Winchester cheeses, won the Golden Fork for his Stoney Cross in England whilst Sarah Furno, who makes Cashel Blue, won the Golden Fork for Ireland. The Golden Forks are given as part of the Great Taste Awards. Basically they are the best tasting food product from each country – not just cheese, any food. For 2 cheeses to achieve such high accolades is truly amazing. The only other piece of news from here is that our Christmas orders will open on the 1st October so look out for the forms in store or order online.