Blue Cheeses

Sheep’s milk can make wonderful blue cheese - noble Roquefort for one. There’s a real affinity between its richness and the metallic twang of the added veining. Capric acid levels in ewe's milk are somewhere between the low of cow and the high of goat meaning there is a hint of that farmyard sweatiness but nothing overwhelming. The milk for Devon’s glorious Beenleigh Blue doesn't have to travel far either: it comes from Tom and Helen Garland's local flock. Like all the best blues, the quality and taste of the paste is just as wonderful as the blue-green veins running through it - a tasty, umami backdrop that lets the inoculated moulds shine. Its sister cheeses, Harbourne Blue (made with goat's milk) and Devon Blue (cow's milk) are superb, too. But to my palate, its the balance of the rich ewe and continental-influenced style that makes Beenleigh so special. 

The cheese is made near Totnes, Devon - by Ticklemore Cheese - to a recipe not unlike its more famous French blue cousin. But in place of Roquefort’s clean sharpness it has a crumbly sweetness: it’s friendlier, less weepy, less palate-puckeringly sharp. The saltiness here is more a rock minerality than a briny spume; the cutting, almost vinegar tang replaced by a softer ripe-lemon sunshine. And as the cheese ages, its sweet youth broadens out into deeper, creamier complexity.

It’s a world-class blue, thoroughly British but with a whiff of French chic. It calls for a lighter fortified wine but nothing with the sweet pruney depths of port or even a Vin Doux Naturel. A five-year-old Verdelho Madeira would hit the mark.

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