Cornish Blue Cheese. © CooksInfo / 2017
Cornish Blue Cheese is a farmhouse blue cheese made from pasteurized milk from Friesian cows. It has a mild, sweet taste like European blue cheeses (as opposed to Stilton), and is meant to be eaten as a relatively young blue cheese.
Vegetarian rennet and mould starter culture are added to the milk. The resultant curd is cut, then shaped by hand and salted. The shaped cheeses are pierced with stainless steel rods to allow air in for the mould to develop and are aged 12 to 14 weeks.
Whole wheel sizes are 1 kg, 2.5 kg and 5 kg (2 ½ pounds, 5 ½ pounds and 11 pounds).
In stores, Cornish Blue Cheese is sold in 100 g (≈3 oz) wedges.
Cornish Blue Cheese is made by Philip and Carol Stansfield, who call their company the “Cornish Cheese Company”, at Knowle Farm in Upton Cross on Bodmin Moor near Liskeard, Cornwall.
They started making Cornish Blue Cheese in 2001.
Company web site: Cornish Cheese Company
Facebook page: Cornish Cheese Company on Facebook
History Notes
In the early 2000s, at least until 2006, the cheese was also supplied to the Paxton & Whitfield company, who rebranded the cheese and sold it for a time as “Caradon Blue Cheese”.
In 2010, Cornish Blue was declared World Champion Cheese 2010 at the World Cheese Awards in Birmingham, England, out of 2,629 cheeses from 29 countries.
Sources
Batty, David. Cornish blue reigns supreme at World Cheese Awards. Manchester: The Guardian. 25 November 2010.
BBC. Cheese company is milking success. 22 October 2004. Retrieved August 2005 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cornwall/3944463.stm
Hirst, Christopher. The British cheese that left the French feeling blue. London: The Independent. 26 November 2010.
Our story. Cornish Cheese Company. Accessed January 2022 at https://cornishcheese.co.uk/pages/our-story