Love Shaped Cheeses for your loved one

The perfect present for the cheese lover in your life…. And if you want to show them JUST how much you love them, why not grab a gorgeously creamy Vacherin Mont D’or as well, cook it up in the oven and serve with a vintage champagne.
order now for Valentines Day!

Wedding Cake at Ashton Court

Hi Jessica and Ben,

Just thought I’d email you some pics of the fabulous wedding cheese cake you supplied us with for our wedding at Ashton Court Mansion last November. It was a truly amazing day and the cake went down an absolute storm!! We served it with the evening ‘cold meats’ buffet, accompanied by our home-made chutneys.

Wine and Cheese Tutored Tasting Review By Alex Te-Strote

image by @Eatpictures

On Weds 18th November Trethowans teamed up with Great Western wines for another fun tasting event at Goldbrick House in Bristol. Richard Guest stepped in at short notice to select & show the wines as Patrick Pigny suddenly needed to be in Italy. Life is so tough in the wine trade! Richard knew nothing of the cheeses,or Trethowans,until a week before the event,so when we sat at 10am on a wet morning tasting pieces I had collected 30mins earlier after a night of refrigeration, it was perhaps not the best introduction. However he was excited by the taste & production stories and was inspired to try and match them to wines whose makers showed equal passion & integrity. This then was the line up for the evening, I think Richard did a stirling job, considering the cheeses we presented on the evening were tasting so much more complex than he had encountered.

Gorwydd Caerphilly Roero Arneis 2007 Negro Angelo E Figli Piemonte, ITALY

This lovely,clean, bright Italian wine was already a notch up from Richards first idea, but unfortunately was still overwhelmed on the evening.

Ragstone Goats Cheese Carrasviñas Verdejo 2008 Bodegas Felix Lorenzo Cachazo Rueda, SPAIN This fresh, zingy wine from Spain was a good alernative to Sauvignon Blanc. Old vines, stony soil, small production, warm days & cold nights all combined to give complexity to the Verdejo grape & it worked well with the cheese.

Sparkenhoe Red Leicester Unravelled Pinot Noir 2008 Carrick Winery Central Otago, NEW ZEALAND

This, to me, was the best match of the evening . A really well structured Pinot Noir, whose silky texture made it a good wine for cheese. The briar fruits matched with the nutty notes in Sparkenhoe, & also brought out the rich, savoury flavour.

Keens Cheddar Corte C (Malbec Merlot) 2006 Vistalba Mendoza, ARGENTINA

This was a superb wine with good weight, and theoretically should have been a good cheddar match, but again the Keens was too much for it, the acidity destroying the violet scented edge I had previously been enjoying. Proof again how unharmonious some mixes can be.

Stichelton Jurançon Cuvée Privilège 2007 Domaine Castera FRANCE

An unusual sweet wine from S W France (rugby country) that is made with Petit Manseng grape. I like less cloying sweet wines with Stichelton, as the creaminess can so easily be overwhelmed, & this wine was comfortably in that category. I would have been interested to try this with Bekswell or Spenwood as well, as the tropical fruits could work quite well.

Mont d’Or Chardonnay 2007 Bogle Vineyards California, U.S.A.

We finished with this unpasteurised Vacherin Mont d’Or, wamed in the oven in its box. Rich, gooey & unctuous. The Californian chardonnay was lightly oaked and had a rich butteriness that sat well with the cheese, but again I think the anti could have been raised a bit here.

The loft at Goldbrick House is an elegant & intimate space, and the group of 45 people were a great crowd. Feedback was good and plenty of interesting, intelligent questions. People were encouraged to try their own couplings of the cheeses & wines, and it was a really entertaining event.

The next one there will be on 20/1/2010, so if you fancy coming along why not visit Goldbrick House event page see how to book.

Alex

 

This is our blog. Click here to visit our website

Winetasting with a winemaker

This is going to be run at our friend Leila’s Shop. I imagine it will be brilliant. Places are very limited though so get in touch with her now if you do want to go. 

Todd’s latest post from the farm – starter cultures

Dear Mongers

This is the situation at present regarding starter cultures on the farm:

For a while now we’ve noticed that our trusted starter culture (the strain we saved from extinction by sending the last remaining sachet to Charlie Westhead to give to Barber’s Starter Culture Lab to propagate and is now used in stitchelton and mrs kirkhams) is losing it’s ummmph. i.e. it is taking longer to reach it’s correct acidity. A certain level of acidity is required to discourage some of the less desireable bacterias.

The lack of acidity is probably down to ” phage”  (pron. farge) – a bacteria that makes cultures less effective, which can occur If you use one strain of culture seven days a week. Our other long serving culture is also weakening. So in the last few months we’ve tried a new one. You may remember cheeses made with this culture – I found them more acidic than I was used to. Also the resulting appearance of the cheese was quite extreme. Even one month old cheeses had the prounounced pie crust rim of something in excess of three months old. Although they looked gnarly and great it made them quite fragile. As a result Maugan has decided to stop using this and is trialling a new strain of culture. The early signs look positive  - more in keeping with what he and Kim are after. So in total we’ll be alternating between three cultures. This is the accepted way to avoid phage – so fingers crossed.

T

How to serve Vacherin Mont D’or

Vacherin Mont-d’Or is the classic dessert cheese. On its own it can replace all other cheeses.

 

Served as a dessert, Vacherin can be accompanied by a great wine, either red or white. But the choice of wine is a very personal affair, influenced by private preferences and the wines commonly found in the area. We simply believe that the ideal wine to accompany a Vacherin Mont-d’Or should have a light, fresh taste to avoid masking the flavour of the cheese.

 

The Vacherin also makes an excellent meal and can be presented in three different ways:

- accompanied by fresh bread and a glass of white or red wine.

- served with jacket potatoes, perhaps adding a little pepper.

- baked in the oven.

 

Vacherin Mont d’Or hot from the oven. A delight:

1) Wrap a sleeve of aluminium foil around a Vacherin Mont-d’Or.

2) Prick the surface with a fork (as for a pie crust). Insert one or two cloves of garlic if you wish.

3) Pour a decilitre of dry white wine over the surface. 

4) Pre-heat an oven to 200°C and bake for 25 minutes.

The “Vacherin Mont-d’Or au four” is ready. Serve by spooning it over potatoes, or try it with bread, like a fondue.

 

Advice  on storing the cheese

Vacherin Mont-d’Or keeps relatively well if certain conditions are met. Ideally it should be stored in a cellar at 10°-12° C. with sufficiently high relative humidity. But the refrigerator cheese container is perfectly acceptable. However, since food dries out in the cold it is important to protect the cheese with plastic wrap or aluminium foil.

After being stored in the refrigerator it is essential to give the cheese time to reach room temperature, as with a good wine. Don’t forget that it comes in a wooden box, so it needs a certain time to release all its flavour and regain its creamy texture.

Vacherin accepts freezing very well and it can be served as a gastronomic surprise in summer: simply move it first into the refrigerator to defreeze slowly, then let it come up to room temperature. The whole cheese should then be eaten because prolonged storage tends to make its consistency too fluid.

 

THE ABOVE TEXT HAS BEEN SHAMELESSLY BORROWED FROM THE VACHERIN MONT D’OR WEBSITE WHICH HAS A HOST OF OTHER INTERESTING INFORMATION ABOUT THIS LOVELY CHEESE.

Alex Te-Strote: a master monger and our king of wholesale

The countryside and food production have always played a large part in my life. I grew up in rural Northamptonshire in an era of post war agricultural policies. I went to school with the children of local farmers, played in their fields and watched as more & more production was squeezed from them.

At home, food was a big part of family life, we grew our own vegetables, swapped them for game from the local poacher, and bought eggs from the local farm. One of my earliest memories is sitting on the back doorstep with my father as he showed me how to skin a rabbit. During the 70’s & 80’s when convenience foods were growing in popularity I almost instinctively felt that artificially manufactured foodstuffs could not be as healthy as natures bounty.

At this time I was at catering college and the food science parts of the course both fascinated me & reinforced my theories, and it was at this time that I started to take nutrition seriously. I spent 35yrs in the hotel & restaurant business, mostly at the coal face (kitchen), and had two attempts at running a restaurant business which enabled me to source local, natural, chemical free foods. Unfortunately I was about 10-15 yrs ahead of the general populace with this thinking, and although I made many good friends & met amazing producers, I failed to make much money with this uncompromising approach.

My bottom line? We have one body, every cell is constantly being renewed, what we put in our mouths are the building blocks for that, so give your body the best.

It was whilst running the first restaurant in S. Wales that I met a couple who were passionate about cheese. They ran a little cheese shop in Cardiff called Huxleys (named after their Old English sheepdog) and they started putting together cheeseboards for me, selecting whichever cheeses were at their peak & writing poetically descriptive labels to attach. The residue of those boards often ended up as my supper, & the labels my chill out reading.

Thus began my love affair with artisan cheese.

After latterly running the speciality department at the now defunct Fresh & Wild store in Bristol, I have somehow managed to once again become ensnared in the cheese trap. Trethowans’ ethos chimes in synchronisity with the values I have developed over the years, and I am grateful to them for allowing me to close the loop by persuading other chefs & food businesses to understand that artisan food is good for us, the countryside, the economy & thus their business. And they taste wonderful.

Who is Todd?

Todd Trethowan became interested in making cheese after working behind the counter at Neal’s Yard Dairy twenty years ago, when it was in its infancy and situated in Neal’s Yard. During this time, Todd was collecting cheese from West Country cheesemakers on a weekly basis. Later, while at studying archaeology at university Todd made Tyn Grug for Dougal Campbell (the Tyn Grug recipe went on to be developed into Lincolnshire Poacher and Hafod), and would often fill in for Charlie Westhead at Neal’s Yard Creamery (then based in Kent) making Ragstone, Peroche and Finn.

Wanting to make cheese himself, and having a Welsh grandmother who had once made cheese, the obvious choice seemed to be Caerphilly. Help came from Chris Duckett, a third generation Caerphilly maker from Somerset and, by the 1990s, one of the only people making the cheese in a traditional manner and on the farm. Todd lived in a camper van in Chris Duckett’s llama field for 6 months learning how to make the cheese then returned to his parents’ farm just outside Llanddewi Brefi to begin production 14 years ago. As the business developed, cheesemaking became a family affair, with Todd’s brother Maugan and his wife Kim (also ex of Neal’s Yard Dairy) now leading the cheesemaking.

Trethowan’s Gorwydd (pronounced Gor-with) Caerphilly is a mature Caerphilly made to a traditional recipe using unpasteurised milk.   The ingredients combined with working the curd by hand, keep the cheese true to the origins of traditional Caerphilly.  The cheese is matured for two months and exhibits a fresh lemony taste with a creamy texture to the outer and a firmer but moist inner. The cheese developed a real following and went on to win a number of awards each year, including at the British Cheese Awards: Best Traditional Cheese, Best Territorial Cheese, Best Welsh Cheese and Best Caerphilly. At the World Cheese Awards, Gorwydd won Best British Cheese.

Todd moved on to develop the business, setting up a stall at Borough Market and in late 2007 our shop in St Nicholas Market, with his wife Jess.

Todd says “Cheese is akin to DNA – the building blocks of life ! ”

Trethowan’s Dairy Tastings – coming up!

Food photography by Eat Pictures, Bristol

Dear cheeselovers!

Here’s a list of our forthcoming events around Bristol and Bath. We would love to see you at one – or even all of them! We will be tasting a range of very seasonal and delicious cheeses and matching them with a range of diverse and interesting wines. Each event is held with a different partner and is very different in character. Each is really fun, informative and basically, a cracking good evening.

We will be in touch very soon with details of Christmas cheeses, Christmas cheese cakes, gift selections and mail order.

Gascoyne Place, 26th October

Our next cheese and wine evening is at Gascoyne Place in Bath at 7pm on the 26th October and we would be delighted to see any of you there. In their usual enthusiastic and lively style, Marty and Todd will be leading you through 6 autumnal cheeses and 6 accompanying wines. The evening will end with a delicious box of raclette. There will also be the opportunity to buy the cheeses you have tasted. Tickets £20

click here for more details.

Harvey Nichols, 3rd November

Our next Autumn Cheese and Wine tasting will be in the 2nd floor restaurant at Harvey Nichols, Bristol on the 3rd of November at 7pm. Discover how delicious artisan cheeses are produced, and how to pair them with carefully chosen wines from around the world.  All the cheeses and wines will be available to buy at the end of the evening.

Tickets are £18 per person. For all bookings and enquiries please call the Restaurant Reception on 0117 916 8898 or email Harvey Nichols

Goldbrick House, 18th November

Here we pair up with Great Western Wines to bring you some great tasting combinations. This one will really get you in the mood for Christmas with some glorious Vacherin Mont D’or and some very seasonal Stichelton.

For tickets, contact Maddy or Katherine by email or on (0117) 945 1950

Avery’s Christmas Wine Fair, Great hall at the Bristol Boys Grammar school, 21st November

12.30pm – 3pm and 5pm – 7.30pm

We will be here with a stan, matching our cheeses to Avery’s wines and giving informal tastings throughout the day. Please do join us. Tickets £20

Visit Avery’s website for more info

Cheese, Wine and Raclette evening at Gascoyne Place, Bath 26th October

Todd and Marty team up again to bring you an evening of delights – in the shape of 5 fabulous autumnal British cheeses, some carefully chosen wines and of course, Trethowan’s Dairy signature, a raclette to end the evening. Come along, bring your friends and enjoy a fantastic, lively and informative evening of food and wine.

Journalist Ned Halley said of Todd and Marty’s last event, “…a brilliant talk by cheesemaker Todd Trethowan, who was showing off his caerphilly to a wildly appreciative audience….Both these young men were infectiously enthusiastic. We learned more about the making of real cheeses in a couple of hours than in an entire lifetime so far, and Marty’s choice of wines was boldly inspired….A wonderfully sociable occasion. We seemed to have made friends with several complete strangers during the course of the evening.”  www.westerndailypress.co.uk

Tickets £20.

This is our blog. Visit our website!