Where Can I Buy Sainsburys Cave Aged Welsh Cheese
A cheese developed by leading farmer-owned Welsh co-operative South Caernarfon Creameries in partnership with Llechwedd Slates Caverns and Sainsburys has won a top food industry award.
The cheese uses a very traditional maturing method with the cheddar being transported from their Chwilog base to the Slate Cavern in Blaenau Ffestiniog and left to mature 500 feet underground.
And the process seems to be working well as the cheese picked up the top honour of Best Dairy Product at the Food Management Today Industry Awards.
The recipe for the cheese was devised by Linda Lewis-Williams, a consultant for South Caernarfon Creameries, and worked in partnership with Win Merrells, cheese developer at Sainsburys, after a coffee meeting led to the creation of the cheese.
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"We were researching the best places to age a cheese," Merrells told the Telegraph , "and came across the idea of a mine. So we rang the nearest one, which happened to be Llechwedd, and spoke to the managing director, Michael Bewick, who said it was the most exciting phone call he'd had all year."
This maturation process, believed to be in the steepest mining maturation caverns, is said to add unique characteristics to the cheese such as firmer body and depth of flavour with rich savoury notes.
The cheese is stored underground for three months, meaning the whole process takes about 14 months to create the cheddar.
"We discovered that one month in the cave makes no difference; two months makes a little change in the cheese; but after three months it is notably different – the texture becomes smoother, closer and denser, and the flavour is more intense.
"If you leave it for another month, again there's no perceptible change. We're now researching the barometric pressure on the cheese at this depth."
Alan Wyn-Jones, managing director at South Caernarfon Creameries, was delighted at scooping the award: "We wanted to develop a truly unique cheddar that really demonstrated our Welsh heritage.
"We are so grateful that Llechwedd Slate Caverns in Blaenau Ffestiniog agreed to work with us to mature our cheese at their mine.
"The award comes weeks before we open our new state-of-the-art cheese production facility on our site in Chwilog, North Wales. Our investment will result in the first new major cheese factory build in the UK since the 1970's and will provide us with best in class production facilities that will further support our growth plans and continued commitment to producing the best quality cheese."
Also on the night of the awards Michael Bewick, managing director at Llechwedd Slate Caverns, said "We are delighted to have been involved with this project from the outset.
"I didn't think that within just twelve months we would be opening our third cheese maturation cave to fulfil demand. The response has been incredible and having cheese maturing in our slate mines has caused a real talking point, especially as visitors see the maturation caves as part of their guided tour of the mine."
For centuries French-made Roquefort cheese has been matured in natural caves where ideal humidity and temperature conditions allowed native blue green molds to flourish.
It was these stable environmental conditions that also made the disused Manod slate cavern, Blaenau Ffestiniog, an obvious choice to house the National Gallery's art collection during WW11.
The process has been adopted by other cheesemakers, including the Cheddar Gorge Cheese Company, but SCC is thought to be the first to try it in Wales.
Once matured, the 14-month-old cheese returns to the Creamery before being cut into ..25kg blocks, hand-dipped in a blue slate coloured wax and finished with a hand-crafted Dragon stamp.
Where Can I Buy Sainsburys Cave Aged Welsh Cheese
Source: https://www.walesonline.co.uk/business/business-news/award-winning-cheese-matures-500ft-10883068