Taking the cheese path to Norfolk and Suffolk

August 2018: Before setting off for the West Country (see earlier blog), we briefly visited the seaside town of Southwold in Suffolk. We knew little about this town or county, except that Adnams (est 1872) is a dominant player in the drinks and hospitality industry here: from beers and ales to wines to gins/vodkas as well as running pubs, hotels and Adnams stores selling beverages and groceries that come in handy with a bottle or glass in hand, such as artisanal beer nuts, and those chutneys and sauces for your barbecue. A family-run enterprise with a strong commitment to environmental preservation and sustainable development, Adnams has reduced the weight of its beer bottles and invested in energy-efficient breweries to make carbon neutral beers. I even tried their recently launched Ghost Ship Alcohol Free (0.5% abv), which retained all the flavours and aromas of the original version at 4.5% abv.


Southwold is a very charming seaside town, with colourful beach huts and a grey sandy/pebbly beach. Even in the blazing sun, the wind chill factor of the North Sea wind still managed to knock a few degrees off the daytime temperature, bitterly felt by the uninitiated as we hastened our footsteps to wind-sheltered spots downtown.

Southwold Pier with its eccentric shops and charming restaurants

 

Southwold beachfront

The visit did allow us to pick up a couple of cheeses from the area for the long journey southwest. For practical reasons, I had to stay with hard or semi-hard cheeses. I picked these two from a cheese specialist called Slate:


Suffolk Gold: A pasteurised Guernsey cow milk cheese, made with vegetarian rennet, produced by Suffolk Farmhouse Cheeses at Whitegate Farm, St Mary, Suffolk. A family-run business started in 2004 by Jason and Katherine Salisbury. Not only do they make cheese, they also make other dairy products and rear pork and beef. A dry natural, grey/brown downy rind, showing white and grey spots. The paste was a bright pale gold-yellow colour, firm but supple. The nose consisted of rich notes of butter, pineapple, peach, nutty (hazelnut), sweet-smelling caramel, with almost a hint of honeycomb. The rind displayed notes of mushroom and damp cellar. It was rich, unctuous, claggy and intensely flavoured, with buttery and caramel flavours, complete with a mild hint of zesty tang at the finish. A mouthful with the rind would add to the complexity with mushroom and cellar notes. A very fine cheese...with more than a passing resemblance to Saint Nectaire, but with more richness and buttery flavours, less pronounced cellar aromas, less salt and less trigeminal sensation.

 

Suffolk Gold

Norfolk Tawny: An unpasteurised cow milk cheese, made using traditional method by Ferndale Cheeses. The milk is sourced from nearby Abbey Farm in Binham. This is a cheese washed weekly with a strong Norfolk ale. The rind was a pale orange colour, with grey/white spots, with a thick grey halo underneath, while the heterogeneous paste contrasted with a pale cream colour, and a chalky/granular texture, with some openings. It felt firm and unyielding. The rind smelt of yeast, earth with an intense umami character, while the paste had aromas of lactic tang like yoghurt, citrus and some earthy character. It had a crumbly texture, but slowly melted in the mouth, allowing the layers of flavours to linger on the palate. There was a well-balanced saltiness to the citrus tang, finishing with a clean tangy and mineral aftertaste.

 

Norfolk Tawny

When we got back to London, I was so excited to find Baron Bigod at The Fine Cheese Company. I had wanted to try this cheese at Southwold but it would have been a disaster in the heat of the car journey. It was well worth the wait. Made by Fen Farm Dairy at Bungay, Suffolk, using milk from the farm's own herd of Montbeliarde cows, this is the only unpasteurised soft-ripened bloomy rind (Brie de Meaux-style) cheese made in the UK. A superbly balanced soft-ripened bloomy rind, showing orange/amber spots in the rind, with a cream-coloured (almost pale gold) paste. After 30 minutes at room temperature, its rich and velvety irresistible deliciousness was oozing out. The aromas were the familiar mushroom, earthy, farmyard, complemented with fruity and buttery notes. Only moderately salty, it was well balanced with a nice citrus tang. A beautifully made cheese in a very good place now.

 

Baron Bigod

There is only one conclusion after these tastings - the UK cheese industry is at a very exciting place now!