Great News!
My last encounter with West Country Farmhouse Cheddar left me feeling a little over-sold and underwhelmed. This was likely no one’s fault but my own, buying as I did such a cheddar wrapped in black wax and shipped over an ocean. Today’s cheese, however, is really turning the page on cheddar in general and West Country Farmhouse Cheddar in specific. I’m not sure anyone anywhere was really waiting for this particular reputation to be redeemed, but here we go anyways.
Keens Traditional Unpasteurized Cheddar. Wouldn’t you know it? It is all of those things. Let me take you on a journey now, to a magical land. The sound of the subway, the glare of the florescent lights, the smell of coffee on that guy’s breath, it’s all fading away. In its place is a world of hedgerow-lined roads barely wide enough for one car, thatch-roofed pubs promising ‘good food and real ale’, and a lot of people calling me ‘boss’. Yes, England. I honestly did not know what to expect from this quick weekend trip, my first to England. A friend’s wedding meant seeing some familiar faces and a rental car meant getting to explore south-west England on the day before the wedding. This day was full of surprises. Not only did I not get into an accident from driving, but the weather was gorgeous and the food was delicious. We set off after breakfast for a day of sightseeing and cheese, full of bacon and beans and egg and fried bread. It could only be a good day. Like any responsible cheese traveler I’d done my homework and found out, to my great delight, that the wedding and reception (and our overnight stay) were pretty close to Cheddar country in England. West Country Farmhouse Cheddar, as you might remember, can only be made in a few counties in England. Fortuntately, the website of the group that maintains this tradition is very informative and gave me an address at which to buy some of this famed curd.
One visit to a large stony tourist attraction later, we piled out of our rental car in the small parking lot of a farm. I had somehow thought there would be a place sit and get some lunch, maybe tour the dairy, but what we found was better. Doing the classic “we don’t know where we’re going, we are not from around here’ walk, we made our way up to what looked like main buildings. As far as we could tell, the only person around was a fellow smoking a cigarette, seemingly on break from doing some maintenance. Graciously he opened up the dialogue with a knowing ‘you all looking to buy some cheese?’. Yes. Yes we are. This kind man led us to a fridge, industrial in size and build, inside of which we found a beautiful collection of cheese and butter from the farm. Thinking better of buying a whole wheel of cheese (we’re not made of money after all), we bought a half wheel. More precisely, our friends bought us a half wheel of cheddar. You should keep the kinds of friends who buy you cheese.
OK, enough story time. You’re here for the cheese. Keen’s Cheddar is true farmhouse operation, meaning they have their own herd, grazing solely on their own land. Land which also houses the cheese making operation. This means, as their website proudly states, that they don’t ever have to transport the milk more than 50 yards, that the cheesemaking process begins within 12 hours of milking, and that the unpasteurized milk they use is about as close to the freshness of that English hillside as you can get. They have a herd of 250 Friesian cows, and the entire cheese making process, from stirring and cutting the curd to cheddaring to flipping the wheels while aging is done by hand.
Origin: Somerset, England
Milk: Unpasteurized cows milk cheese
Rennet: Animal
Affinage: Between 12 and 18 months
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| Ah England, where it is always this sunny |
Notes: An unassuming little wheel of cheese. The half wheel we got had a lightly textured rind with the pleasant grays and tans of a natural rind. From appearances it is not quite like other cheddars I’ve had, neither the clear calcium crystals of the more aged cheddars nor the rubbery texture of lesser cheddars. Smells like a raw milk cheese, a promising straw-white colo(u?)r and hints of the kind of strata that you get in an extra aged Gouda.
Thoughts: That it is a raw milk cheese is apparent from the first, indeed this cheese is almost tart as it first hits the tongue, the acidity of the milk never having been blasted away or blended out on a commercial scale. It’s also chewy, almost in the way that cheese curds or Halloumi are chewy. At first I was afraid the cheddar was going to be too dry, lacking in that satisfying fatty rush usually associated with whole milk cow cheeses. Nor is there the usual glut of salt, a hallmark of most cheddars. To be honest, I actually look forward to this combination when I get a good cheddar, or even a bad cheddar, because salt and fat pretty much sell themselves as a flavor combination. That said, Keens Cheddar does not disappoint so much as it proudly stands for what it is, a Cheddar in a class of its own. All of the textural and flavor notes change moments after the first bite, washing the palate in a complex richness. This stands out in comparison to other cheddars, other very good cheddars, in that the tasting notes are recognizably cheddar but unlike anything I’ve had before. Perhaps this is the Westcountry Farmhouse Cheddar difference? For example, there is no horesradish in this cheese, and yet just before the wave of rich nutty sweetness hits you get a tickling of the tip of the tongue of just that; horseradish. This is also the most notable flavor in the aftertaste, which is delightful.
Week 2 of the relaunch! This is a 100% improvement on my previous streak in the past 6 years. Going to go eat some celebratory cheese.
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