Price range: £4.20 through £45.00
Barkham Blue is a wonderfully creamy British blue made with rich Channel Island cow’s milk. Its golden-yellow paste is streaked with blue-green veins, bringing together buttery sweetness, gentle peppery spice and a lovely savoury finish.
Barkham Blue is one of those cheeses you can spot from the other side of the counter. With its deep golden-yellow paste, blue-green veining and rustic natural rind, it certainly stands out — but thankfully it tastes every bit as good as it looks.
What makes Barkham Blue particularly unusual is the milk. It’s made using rich Channel Island cow’s milk, which gives the cheese its wonderful golden colour and beautifully creamy texture. Jersey and Guernsey milk contains higher levels of butterfat than standard cow’s milk, making Barkham quite different from many of the more traditional British blues.
The result is a blue cheese that manages to be rich, buttery and wonderfully creamy while still having plenty of character from those blue veins. If someone tells me they’re not sure about blue cheese, Barkham is exactly the sort of cheese I might encourage them to try.
Barkham Blue was originally created by Sandy and Andy Rose at Two Hoots Cheese, near the Hampshire-Berkshire border. And yes, there really is a story behind that name — Two Hoots was named after two orphaned owls the couple once looked after!
From the beginning, the Roses did things a little differently. Using rich Channel Island milk for a blue cheese isn’t necessarily the easiest route to take, but it became one of the things that made Barkham Blue so distinctive.
More recently, production of Barkham Blue has passed to Sandy’s cousin Anne and the team at Village Maid Cheese in Berkshire. I always think it’s rather lovely when a much-loved cheese can move into its next chapter while keeping that connection to the family behind it.
Barkham Blue is matured for several weeks, during which time its rustic natural rind develops and the blue mould works its way through the cheese.
Cut inside and you’ll immediately see what makes it different. The Channel Island milk gives the paste its gorgeous golden-yellow colour, while blue-green veins run throughout. Against all that rich, creamy cheese, the blue brings just enough peppery spice and savouriness to balance things out.
It’s proof that blue cheese doesn’t have to be crumbly, powerful or challenging. Sometimes it can be gloriously creamy instead.
Barkham Blue is rich, buttery and almost melt-in-the-mouth, with a wonderfully smooth texture that makes it very different from our more crumbly British blues.
The first flavours are sweet and creamy, and then the blue slowly starts to make itself known. There’s a gentle peppery spice, a little savouriness and just enough of that distinctive blue tang, but it never overwhelms the lovely richness of the milk.
Towards the rind you’ll find slightly earthier flavours and perhaps a little more bitterness, which I really like against the sweet, buttery centre. Make sure you taste a piece that includes both — you really do get a different experience as you eat from the centre towards the rind.
This is a brilliant blue for people who think they don’t like blue cheese, but there’s still more than enough going on to keep those of us who already love blue very happy.
Jen’s note: We had a whole wheel of Barkham Blue as part of our wedding cheese cake. It went down a treat with our guests and was one of the first cheeses to disappear — although I’m not entirely sure how much of it I ate myself!
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Delivery and Collection
Ingredients (Allergens are listed in capitals)
MILK, salt, starter cultures, rennet, Penicillium Roqueforti
Normal opening Monday – Saturday 9am – 4pm until:
Sunday 22nd 9am – 4pm
Monday 23rd 9am – 4pm
Christmas Eve 9am – 12pm
Christmas Day Closed
Boxing Day Closed
Friday 27th Closed
Saturday 28th 9am – 4pm
Sunday 29th Closed
Monday 30th 9am – 2pm
Tuesday 31st 9am – 2pm
New Year’s Day Closed
Thursday 2nd January Closed
Friday 3rd 9am – 4pm then open as normal
After Christmas our courier delivery slots start from 8th January.
