What makes Cheshire Cheese so special? A British classic explained

Cheshire cheese is one of the oldest traditional British cheeses. According to some cheese historians, it even gets its own mention in the Domesday Book. Cheshire is renowned for its delicious salty flavour and for being one of the UK's ancient crumbly cheeses.

Of course, we love Cheshire cheese and source ours from a traditional cheesemaker in Nantwich, Cheshire; however, we don't feel that this traditional cheese receives the recognition it deserves.

Read if you'd like to learn more about this classic British cheese.

Crumbly Cheshire Cheese

Cheshire Cheese has a moist, crumbly texture

This distinctive texture is a result of the cheese-making process. Cheshire cheese is served young, as it only ripens for two to three months, allowing the cheese to retain a high level of moisture and remain soft. The cheese is made by straining the whey out of the curds.

By comparison, the harder, drier texture of Cheddar cheese is created by turning and pressing the cheese, and then letting it mature for at least nine months.

Other crumbly cheeses are produced in Shropshire, Staffordshire, Wensleydale, Lancashire, Flintshire and Denbighshire in North Wales. British territorial cheeses were initially made from raw milk, but modern food standards now require that most cheese be made with pasteurised milk.

The distinctive taste of Cheshire Cheese

Cheshire cheese is well known for its creamy flavour with a hint of salt.

Salt is added during the cheese-making process, but the salty tang of authentic cheddar is inherent in the milk used in its production.

Cheshire cows graze on the lush meadows of Cheshire plain. Hidden beneath the ground are vast salt deposits, remnants of ancient seas. Traces of salt have leached into the soil, the grass that the cows eat and ultimately into Cheshire cheese, giving it a delicious natural tang.

The different varieties of Cheshire cheese

Although we often think of Cheshire as a pale, buttery coloured cheese, there are two lesser-known colour variations.

Red Cheshire is a Cheshire-style cheese originally made by cheesemakers in North Wales. The red colouring was annatto, commonly used by cheese makers to standardise the colour of cheese. The red colouring was so popular that Cheshire cheese makers began to colour their cheeses, but this practice is less popular now.

Blue Cheshire is an English blue cheese, similar to a Shropshire Blue or Stilton. This type of cheese was popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but has fallen out of favour.

An ancient British Cheese

The cool summers and warm winters of Cheshire have always made it an excellent dairy area, with plenty of fresh grass to feed cows. It seems likely that the locals have been making cheese for millennia. The city we now know as historic Chester was originally a Roman town called Deva. The Romans were cheese lovers, and it seems likely that they encouraged the local cheese industry.

Certainly, cheese from this North West corner of the UK was well known enough to have a London pub named after it. Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese was built in 1538 and was rebuilt after the Great Fire of London in 1666.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, Cheshire was the most popular cheese in England. One large customer was the Royal Navy, which bought it as provisions for the fleet.

Poor man's meat

The nineteenth century brought another surge in interest in Cheshire Cheese. As the towns and cities of the North West developed during the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution, cheese consumption increased because it was cheaper for workers to buy than meat. Bread and cheese were the workers' staple, and cheese became known as the poor man's meat.

The new canal network boosted the local cheese industry. Two branches of the Shropshire Union canal converged at Nantwich in the most fertile part of the county, providing transportation for cheese across England.

Cheshire cheese consumption today

Britain's cheese industry underwent significant changes during the Second World War, when government control of food production ensured food security for the British public.

Large-scale factory production of cheese was introduced, primarily of the Cheddar type, and milk supplies were commandeered for this purpose. Cheddar was chosen because of its versatility for cooking and eating cold. Its hard, dry texture made transportation and storage easier than that of the crumbly, moist Cheshire cheese.

As a result of this intervention in Britain's cheese industry, mass-produced Cheddar cheese became the most popular cheese in the UK. The popularity of many historic varieties, including Cheshire, declined, and British cheesemakers were also affected by the increased availability of continental varieties.

For a long time, true cheese lovers would search supermarket cheese counters in vain for authentic Cheddar cheese or crumbly Lancashire. However, as tastes change and sustainable, traceable food is becoming more valued again. Cheshire and other varieties of authentic British territorial cheeses are experiencing a resurgence in popularity in Britain today.