Rose Grimond started making cheese in January 2015 at the Nettlebed Creamery. Now in its second year, the Creamery is home to award-winning St Bartholomew and Bix made by cheesemakers Tee (Tracey) Scotthorne and Ali Lees. After changing the recipe, they began producing St Bartholomew in quantity in September 2015.
The milk is organic and comes from the Merrimoles Farm Dairy at Bix (part of the Nettlebed Estate). The herd is a cross-breed of Holsteins, Swedish Reds and Montbeliards with a few Swiss Browns. The cows graze on grass and clover leys with additional herbs such as chicory, plantain and yarrow.
Rose spent five years selling produce from Orkney at Borough Market. Her stall allowed her to make useful contacts when the future of the family farm came up for discussion and Rose wanted to move out of London. She started thinking about what they could do with the milk,” she says. Cheese making felt like the natural choice.
They share the dairy premises with and Norton and Yarrow Cheese.
St Bartholomew is a semi-hard, unpasteurised cheese, named after Nettlebed village church. It is made with organic milk to a recipe which is similar to many alpine cheeses. The cheese is matured for 5-6 months. They wash the rind for the first two weeks of the cheese’s life before allowing it to mature and develop a natural rind with blue-grey moulds.
See my Artisan Cheeses from Oxfordshire for more details.
See also Photographing Cheese
