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The
story of the cheese... |
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| Dorset Blue Vinny cheese could once be found in nearly every farmhouse in the county. It was an ideal way of using the 'left-over' milk after the cream had been skimmed off for butter-making. As a result the cheese had a very low fat content which was typically very hard, dry and crumbly, with little or no blue. The blueing in those days was encouraged by a number of methods, for example dragging mouldy horse harnesses through the milk before adding the rennet, storing the cheese on damp hessian bags or even next to mouldy boots. You may be relieved to know that we no longer resort to any of these methods but instead the blue is introduced by means of a blue mould solution! We use the milk straight from our own herd of 200 friesian cows and once the milk has been brought up to temperature it is hand-skimmed. We actually add skimmed milk powder to bring the fat content back up to approximately 3.3% - this is because as mentioned before the original cheese was very dry and hard. By adding the powder it enables us to produce a slightly more creamy and subtle tasting cheese which is far better suited to today's more modern palate. |
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