In our first week at the old farm shop, 5 years ago, a customer came to the shop after having bought an Isle of Wight Blue Cheese with a complaint.
“I’m afraid this cheese is mouldy”.
Luckily, Sam and I persevered and we have sold a serious amount of IOW Blue cheese ever since. It really is an outstanding cheese that has been recognized by our customers as well as by International cheese awards.
The Isle of Wight Blue Cheese won Best English at the 2007 World Cheese Awards. It is a naturally rinded soft blue cheese that is made with pasteurised Guernsey cows’ milk from the herd that graze around the Queen Bower Dairy.
It is blue veined and is sold at 3-5 weeks of age. It comes with a 4 week shelf life. Being hand-made, the sizes have a minimum weight of 200g but are approximately 230g, some slightly larger some slightly smaller. When the cheese is sold at 3-4 weeks it has a relatively mild blue flavour but expect the IOW Blue to accelerate quickly so that by the time it is at the end of its Use By date, the flavour will be a lot more spikier than when it was young.
Being naturally rinded, it has bags of character and the variety of surface moulds that grow on the rind will make this cheese stand out on any cheeseboard.
The cheese picked up further medals in 2008 at the British and World Cheese Awards in Cardiff and Dublin and was a finalist in the 2009 Tesco Cheese Challenge.
Ruth will have some on Taster this weekend – so if you haven’t tried it before, come and have a taste and find out what you have been missing.
Other new cheeses in this week will be a lovely Irish Gubbeen and Old Amsterdam – a delicious, crystalline Gouda.