All of Neal's Yard Dairy Stilton comes from Colston Bassett. Of course, they also carry Shropshire Blue and Stichelton. (Look for more info on these fantastic cheeses in a later blog). Anyway, the folks at Colston Bassett & NYD have had a special relationship that goes back many years with company chairman, Randolph Hodgson.
What makes this relationship so special is that NYD has exclusive rights to the only animal rennet version of the cheese. Another words, if you buy Colston Bassett anywhere in the world and it does NOT have the NYD label on it, then you are getting a vegetable rennet cheese.
Now, back to the important part how does it make it from the producer to the cheese counter??
STEP 1: Check them in. At Neal's Yard, they take great care to make sure everything is "up to spec". Starting with counting, checking invoices, and taking temperatures. Temps you say? Yes, they use a temperature probe to insert into the cheese to check it's temperature. It is the ultimate safety and quality check to look at the temperatures. From that point on, quality assurance is in the hands of the pros at the caves.
STEP 2: Now what?!? Unpack them, of course. Putting them away is pretty easy as long as you have plenty of muscle. So, first they get taken out of their boxes and then unwrapped with the boxes being broken down. However, I am happy to report that the boxes are kept for re-use later, when said cheese is ready for packing.
STEP 3: Putting the cheese on the shelf. Each hard cheese at NYD is kept in what they call the Dry Room. This room is specifically designed to help the cheese age without drying out. Great lengths are taken to ensure that the cheeses mature along that fine line between slow development and quick death. A special blower with cover is used to help dampen the air flow, while the temperature and humidity are watched carefully. In addition, the floor is watered down often to ensure that the moisture that IS pulled out of the room comes from the water and NOT the cheese. You may notice that the cheeses are being stacked on wooden boards. This is the BEST way to age cheese. The boards are made of spruce with a rough surface being kept as to help keep air flowing even through the bottom of the cheeses. This way, the cheese is able to breathe well and age well. Even that is not perfect, so, in order to keep the cheese aging perfectly, each wheel is manually flipped at least once per week.
STEP 4: Once the cheese is put on the shelves, each one of them gets a tag. This tag has the name of the cheese and it's batch date. The batch date is exactly like it's birth date. Each cheese that has the same 'birth date' is placed in the same area and tracked to see how it reacts to the environment and tasted periodically. A batch may have anywhere from 1-100 wheels and although there are some discrepancies between each wheel, they are treated as equals.
Now, what I didn't mention, is that there is so much cheese at NYD that sometimes you have to go higher than the lower level. Another words, you have to throw the wheels from the bottom level to the top so that they can be stacked in the appropriate batch order. It is fun to "toss" the wheels until you realize that your arm has grown numb from tossing cheese around for over an hour.
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| This is Michael. He is one of the great employees of NYD. In this pose, he is wondering why the new guy is taking so long to lift up the Stilton to him. Could it be that Dave plays Rugby?!? |
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