Our idyllic autumn cheese school

On Sunday we held our second all-day cheese school this year in the romantic and atmospheric surroundings of the Barley Wood Walled Garden at Wrington.

It was held in an decorated antique tent with cheesemaking demonstrations by Tim Homewood of Homewood Cheeses in the cider barn. (We were incredibly lucky that it was so mild for the end of October and that the rain held off!)



The tent had been decorated by Toast with candles, storm lanterns, bunting and apples

We had two visiting cheesemakers, Tim Homewood and Joe Schneider who makes the legendary Stichelton as well as our resident cheesemakers Todd and Maugan Trethowan of Trethowans Dairy.



We tasted all different kinds of cheeses and had our popular beer vs wine smackdown with Bristol Beer Factory and Matt Eggens of Avery's


We put together cheeseboards and seasonal cheeseplates like this one I based on Sparkenhoe's mature Red Leicester.



Tom Herbert of Hobbs House Bakery brought along a selection of his amazing breads and even handed out cupfuls of his 76 year old (I think!) sourdough starter.


Jack and Matt of The Ethicurean who run the cafe at the venue cooked a lovely lunch of beetroot and curd soup, Old Demdike (sheeps cheese) and pear salad with leaves from the vegetable garden and a gorgeous sticky toffee apple cake about which I've raved already.



And Jack and Peter Snowman of the Bristol Cider shop talked to us about apples and cider and cheese.


I also bought the most beautiful wooden cheeseboard which would make a lovely Christmas present. If you want one like it email wayneyedgeATyahooDOTcoDOTuk (he'll have a website soon)


A special day. All credit to Jess Trethowan and Cathy Gremin the heroic organisers of the event.

The next Cheese School is a special candlelit evening of cheese (and wine and beer, of course) in the beautiful medieval setting of St Thomas the Martyr church, Bristol on December 15th.

The ultimate cheeselover's weekend

If you love cheese, visit the West Country the last weekend of October.

There are two great all-day events on.

On Saturday 29th there's the Fine Cheese Company's cheese festival at Milsom Place in Bath which features over 20 artisanal cheesemakers. I went last year and it was fab. You get a fantastic chance to taste the best of British cheeses.

And on the Sunday Trethowan's Dairy and I have our latest Cheese School which is being held for the first time in the beautiful Barley Wood Walled Garden (above) at Wrington, just outside Bristol. Inspired by the surroundings - there are also some amazing orchards there - we are going to focus on cheese and apples and apple flavoured drinks including, of course, cider and local cheesemaker Tim Homewood of Homewood Cheeses will be showing you how to make your own cheese in the old cider barn.

There will also be talks from Joe Schneider producer of what I think is currently Britain's best blue cheese, Stichelton, an unpasteurised version of Stilton, a French v British cheese tasting and a wine and beer 'smackdown' to see which is the best drink with cheese - or at least the cheeses we field on the day.

You can find more information and booking details on the Cheese School website including some recommended places to stay. The picture below, by Rob of Eat Pictures, is of our 'Amazing Tastes' session where you get the chance to create your own cheese plates and boards!

What’s special about Cheese School

As co-founder of Cheese School I’m probably the last person who should be writing this post but I do think we’ve got something very special going and I think the key to it is the participation of cheesemakers and other artisanal producers.

At our last session two weeks ago (mea culpa - I meant to write it up before now) we had the legendary Charlie Westhead of Neal’s Yard Creamery who makes Perroche, Dorstone and Ragstone and Maughan and Kim, Todd Trethowan’s brother and sister in law who make Gorwydd Caerphilly talking about how they make and mature their cheese and how the seasons affect it.


Andy Cooper from the Bristol Beer Factory and Matt Eggens of Averys of Bristol went head to head in our ‘Beer versus Wine’ ‘smackdown’.


We copped out and told them they’d both won. Well, we want them to come back and do it again, don’t we?

Elly and Dan from the brilliant underground supper club Montpelier Basement came in and made an amazing lunch of cauliflower soup with Welsh rarebit (above) and Homewood fresh ewes cheese with blood orange and marmalade croutons (below), the recipes for which you can find on Dan’s blog Essex Eating and ellypear's posterous


We also had some delicious bread from Marks Bread, coffee from Cornwall roasters Origin Coffee and fruit from the Bristol-based Better Food Company. And food photographer Rob of Eat Pictures took some great pix which you can find on his posterous blog here. Grateful thanks to all.

So what next? Well, we’re planning a big outdoor event for the summer which we’ll tell you about as soon as we’ve fixed the date (probably July) but the really great thing is the number of producers and other good people who want to come along and do a session with us. So it’s gradually growing . . .

Christmas Cheese School

It’s hard to be objective about events in which you’re involved but I thought our Christmas Cheese School was just lovely. About 20 of us sat round a long candlelit (and electric heater-lit, hence the red glow) table in the nave of St Thomas the Martyr a late 18th century church in the centre of Bristol. (I confess I didn’t know what this part of a church was called but found the answer within seconds when I Googled it. The wonder of WikiAnswers.)

We kicked off with a talk on winter cheese by cheesemaker Todd Trethowan who explained how his Gorwydd Caerphilly changes at this time of year (the cows feed on silage rather than fresh grass which results in a more intense flavour) why you sometimes can’t buy goats cheeses (if the cheesemaker lets the goats kid) and why Vacherin is now at its best (you only have to taste it to see for yourself). We also found it went wonderfully well with the mulled cider donated by local producer Orchard Pig.

Cheesemonger Alex Te-Strote valiantly talked about how to put together a Christmas cheeseboard through several layers of cold while Andrew Cooper of the Bristol Beer Factory persuasively argued the case for putting beer as well as wine on the table.

Then I took a different angle on matching cheese by pairing Joe Schneider's Stichelton (the amazing unpasteurised version of Stilton) with a Douro red, Monbazillac sweet wine, the Bristol Beer Factory’s Ultimate Stout, local producer Bramley and Gage’s Sloe Gin and Avery’s Bristol Cream sherry. (The most popular pairings seemed to be the Monbazillac and sherry though I was very taken with the stout)

The evening was punctuated with bursts of festive organ music played by one of the Trethowans Dairy cheesemongers Charlie Usher (below with mulled cider) who won the title of young composer of the year a couple of years ago. Talk about versatile . . .


The next all day Cheese School is on Sunday February 6th at Bordeaux Quay. If you're in a panic for a last minute Christmas present you can buy gift vouchers here!

Candlelit Christmas Cheese School

A quick plug for those of you who live in or can get to the West Country next week - we have our first Christmas Cheese School next Thursday (December 16th), a candlelit tasting at the wonderfully atmospheric St Thomas the Martyr church in Bristol.

This is a mini, seasonal version of our all-day cheese schools with three rather than the usual six elements:

* A talk about winter cheese by cheesemaker Todd Trethowan of Gorwydd Caerphilly - i.e. what sort of flavours you can expect from your favourite cheeses at this time of year

* A talk on how to put together the perfect Christmas cheeseboard by Ben Ticehurst, head cheesemonger of Trethowans Dairy

* and an exploration of different drink pairings with Stichelton and Stilton by me. Blues are one of the most interesting cheeses to match as they work just as well with fortified wines, spirits, beers and liqueurs as they do with still wines.

There are still a few tickets available (at £40 a head) but they're selling fast so get in quick! If you miss it we have another all day cheese event on February 6th for which you can buy gift vouchers on the Big Barn website (they also sell a number of the Trethowans' cheeses and their scrumptious new range of matching jellies)*. The last day for orders is December 18th.

* And no, just in case you were wondering, I'm not on commission!

First Cheese School, now Cheese University!

Having recently set up Cheese School with cheesemonger and cheesemakers Trethowan's Dairy I was pleased to see you can also now go to Cheese University!

According to a newsletter from Sopexa, the body which promotes French food and wine, a new university diploma in 'Cheese and Heritage" has been created by l'Université François Rabelais de Tours and the Institut Européen d'Histoire et des Cultures de l'Alimentation.

Studies on the 10 month course curriculum apparently include "the history and geography of milk production and the cheese industry, anthropology and the consumption of cheeses and the sociology of food, marketing and sales. This gives graduates a practical knowledge of cheese through a multi-disciplinary training of all aspects of cheese-making and selling cheese including knowledge of terroirs, the social value of cheese consumption and handling world varieties" (Glad to know cheese consumption has social value. I feel that justifies my indulging in it as regularly as I do.)

The modules, which will be launched in September 2010, are being offered to students who have been in further education for 2 years, people working in cheese production, retail and catering and foreign students (which would make it sensible to have some foreign language versions of the website although there is an English pdf you can open.)

I suspect this is mainly designed for people working in multinational dairy companies rather than small artisanal enterprises though, encouragingly, they do have a couple of historians, a sociologist and an anthropologist on the staff.

Nearer home you can also take cheesemaking courses at the School of Artisan Food which offers an introduction to artisan cheese and more advanced courses on making different styles of cheese. I hope to make it to one later this year.

And - taking the opportunity for a quick plug - the next one day session of Cheese School is on Sunday June 13th at Bordeaux Quay in Bristol featuring Neal's Yard cheesemaker Charlie Westhead of Neal's Yard Creamery who makes the fabulous goats cheeses Dorstone, Ragstone and Perroche.

Cheese School update

It's only 3 days now till our first all day session of Cheese School and there suddenly seems a massive amount of work to do: buying ingredients, sourcing wines and beers and begging and borrowing a whole lot of artisanal products to use for our 'Amazing Tastes' session.

It's interesting how the day has evolved since we first had the idea. Originally we were going to have a cooking demo but we reckoned that what people really wanted to know was to learn more about cheese and how to use it so we've dropped that.

Instead we thought it would be fun to attempt a 3 course cheese lunch though that doesn't seem quite such a brilliant idea now when we add that to all of the other things we have to do! And when we think about how much cheese people are going to be eating anyway. (It's goats cheese, beetroot and walnut salad, macaroni cheese and upside down lemon and blueberry cheesecakes for those of you who are curious about how we're going to pull it off)

The concept of the Amazing Tastes session has also changed. Originally I was going to demonstrate some unconventional ways of putting cheeses and other ingredients together but we decided it would be much more interesting to have everyone doing their own thing so we're laying on a whole lot of cheeses, chutneys, fruits and nuts for people to get creative with.

The cheese pairing session will also be fun: we're going to get a local wine merchant Avery's and a brewer, the Bristol Beer Factory, to come along and each match 4 wines and 4 beers to 4 cheeses and see which come out tops.

And the morning sessions with the cheesemakers are going to give people a real chance to appreciate the difference in artisanal British cheeses. Todd Trethowan who makes Gorwydd Caerphilly is going to show how cheese changes as it ages and Sam Holden who makes Hafod is going to compare different cheddars.

I suspect by the end of the day we'll all be cheesed out but we can't wait!

Introducing Cheese School

Since I got back from my cheese trip to New York last December I've been buzzing with ideas about cheese events so it's good to be able to announce that cheesemonger Jess Trethowan and I have launched Cheese School which we're immodestly billing as the "ultimate experience for cheeselovers".

Basically Jess - who with her husband Todd runs Trethowan's Dairy in Bristol - and I thought of all the things we'd really like to do with cheese: meeting and talking to cheesemakers, trying new cheeses, playing around with different ingredients and wine and other drink pairings, cooking with it, scoffing it . . . and came up with the idea of a single day where you could do all of that.

The first day, which will take place on Sunday April 11th at Bordeaux Quay Cookery School in Bristol will have as guest cheesemakers Jess's husband Todd who also makes Gorwydd Caerphilly and Sam and Rachel Holden who make Hafod Cheddar, two cheeses I've enthused about on this blog before. Inspired by my recent Ultimate Macaroni Cheese Challenge we're also going to be cooking up a great mac'n'cheese lunch and also getting tips on how to buy and keep cheese at its best. You can find the full programme on our new website here.

We're also up for organising one-off events and doing a bit of staff training which Jess, who likes a good pun, has dubbed Cheese Train. (I'm sure it'll only be a matter of time before we have a Cheese Bus. I kid you not - Jess has already got a Cheese Bike!)

You can keep up with what we're up to on the site and on Twitter where we tweet as @CheeseSchool. And we hope you'll come and join us for a day of cheesy indulgence!