Rollright Cheese

Rollright is often described as an English version of Reblochon PDO. It is wrapped in a band of spruce bark. This helps to keep the cheese together as it is so soft it would fall apart without it! It is brine washed during its maturation which gives it a delicate, peachy-pink rind. This ripens the cheese within to a rich, spoonable, silky texture. The cheese itself has flavours of cured ham, mustard seeds and crème fraiche with a hint of piney, smoky notes.

Rollright is named after the Neolithic Rollright stones which stand close to the original site of the dairy, just outside Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire. The dairy has since moved over the border into Gloucestershire in order to be on the same site as the Friesian and Shorthorn cattle which provide the milk for this beautiful cheese.

Rollright is made by hand by David Jowett. David trained in culinary arts before cheese took him away from the kitchen. While on an internship at Ram Hall Farm, he enrolled to study for a one year diploma in dairying at the School of Artisan Food, where he studied the craft of farmhouse cheesemaking alongside other traditional food disciplines. His journey in cheese has taken him from co-managing a branch of Paxton & Whitfield to making cheese at Berkswell, the Welbeck Estate (Stichelton), the Cellars at Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont, USA, Neal’s Yard Dairy in London, and then two years as head cheesemaker at Gorsehill Abbey Farm, Worcestershire, before embarking on Rollright in 2015.