Barkham Blue Cheese

Description

Barkham Blue is one of our favourite, local cheeses. This fabulous cheese has a very distinctive shape and appearance. It has a rich blue taste with a smooth buttery texture. It melts in the mouth without the harshness associated with some blue cheeses. An incredible blue cheese, unique in that it is made using Guernsey milk. Usually this milk types doesn’t lend itself  well to blue cheeses as it is particularly rich and the blue veining can make the milk go sour but Barkham Blue doesn’t suffer from this at all. In fact you could say the opposite is true as the cheese is beautifully creamy with the cheesemakers themselves describing it as ‘blue butter’.

Barkham Blue is made in the village of Riseley on the outskirts of Reading. This is home to Village Maid Cheese who make several of our wonderful, local cheeses. Village Maid Cheese was started in 1986 by Anne Wigmore. Anne had previously worked for the National Institute for Research in Dairying as a microbiologist, but she left in order to pursue her dream of producing her own cheeses.

Today Anne works alongside her husband, Andy, and their son and daughter in law, Jake and Kayleigh. The Wigmore family have recently completed a new dairy and maturation rooms at their village location. Their cheese production is second to none in the UK. They encapsulate the true ethos of artisan cheesemaking.

We visit the Village Maid dairy every 2 weeks to buy our cheese direct from them. This means that we have the opportunity to chat to the cheesemakers and find out what their plans are for the future. We also feature 5 other cheeses from Village Maid. They are Waterloo, Spenwood, Wigmore, Heckfield and Maida Vale.

The cheese comes in a wheel which usually weighs between 900g – 1kg. If you buy an eighth it will weigh approximately 110-125g, a quarter will be 220-250g whereas a half will be 440-500g.

Barkham Blue is a multi-award-winning cheese with Supreme Champion performances at the British Cheese Awards. It has also won numerous Super Golds at the World Cheese Awards, 3 stars from the Great Taste Awards…the list goes on.

It pairs beautifully with white wines. If you can, try it with a sweet dessert wine.

Ingredients (Allergens are listed in capitals)

MILK, salt, starter cultures, rennet, Penicillium Roquefortii