Stranger Blues: Tuesday Night is Cheese Night #6 with Charlie Turnbull

#TNCN with Charlie Turnbull & Nigel Barden- Discussing World Cheese TV and the stranger people he has encountered in the cheeses decades reporting the cheese world

Live Broadcast On: 12th May 2020

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World Cheese TV Episode Video Transcript

Tuesday night is cheese night, let’s get me on screen, how do i do that let’s hide that nice to meet you everyone welcome back it’s tuesday the best day of the week.

I’m glad you joined me again for tuesday night, it’s tuesday and for the new viewers out there we’re about cheese we’re about a bit fun and a bit of wine. Tonight we’re going to be talking about blue cheeses some of the stranger blues.

Last week we had the inestimable Marcus Briggstock  talking about his favorites and he had a little stilton on This time we’ve got someone even more cheesy the famous  Nigel Barden uh he has been doing things in food and cheese the radio top line for well not so many years but he’s looking a bit bill nye this evening so if you think it’s bill put a big thumbs up on the uh on on the chat so let’s get him in.

but first we need to go and find Tracey, Tracey are you there here hello you must be knackered Tracey you must be knackered um yes i took yesterday off completely um after three amazing days of the british cheese weekend uh it was phenomenal we it went very smoothly i can’t believe you managed it i mean you literally you and pat um three weeks from standing start i mean that is covered all over covered rules uh if you can’t do in three weeks don’t do it at all but even so you’ve got such fantastic even got prince charles involved yeah we had his royal highness um kindly from clarence house i think they were they were tweeting and they were face uh instagram story sending instagram stories and um posting up on their website as well and then on sunday prince charles released his favorite easy recipe which was awesome so that really helped to spread the reach which was amazing good but we we’re hearing here’s a good stuff now we’re gonna have a little bit of an after party on the british cheese weekend uh from about 8 30 it’s got extended tissue oh dear i’m coughing that isn’t actually a fantastic peter’s yard cracker going slightly down the wrong way um so for me i thought we’d have a roll down on the whole british cheese weekend a thing but let’s get  Nigel who i believe is sitting in the virtual green room  Nigel can you hear me look my way  Nigel here we go right this way [Laughter] [Applause] right let’s let’s see if we can move Tracey around a bit uh and back around and see if we can so welcome  Nigel welcome to tuesday night’s cheese night it’s very exciting delighted to be here what a weekend well done you i wish i could do this you know give you a big hug but there will be plenty of reasons to do it later on but uh remarkable stuff there’s been a lot of virtual hugging going on and i really appreciate it but the work that went on this weekend it was just impressive and and some of the real highlights you know i mean the the tretheon boys todd morgan going through uh you know and watch where the pitchfork cheddar was made you know they’ve got two cheeses in the top 16 in the world cheese awards i mean these are yes the good news is the amazing news is as well they’ve just posted on instagram that they’ve gone back into the dairy and they’ve started making again from today oh brilliant so they just they really yeah they said as well as people have been making cartwheels it seems like a lifetime ago you know from kel’s typhi when he put that heartfelt video there online you know let you can have my cheese if you can’t afford to paper it just have it if you can pay me something at christmas too you know and for a man who who was uh not you know quite you know he’s quite a doer farmer to do that from the heart and no one sold out within 10 days and then started making cheese again and i just think it’s all about because for every success story we talk about there are many others who aren’t dwindling shelf life some we’ve got some great cheese and particularly blue and soft cheeses that we need to be shifting and uh we’re beginning to but also it’s putting a spotlight on our great cheese makers and that’s what you should be so proud of yourselves you know you too and Pat Mcguigan you know from the release from the prisoner how brilliant he was we’re actually hoping he might join us this evening so we’ll see so uh um we’ll see if he can join he says he might be here around 8 20 or 8 30. so that would be good news and you can tell us what he’s been doing but we’re here today for at least initially  Nigel to talk about blue cheese the blue cheese i mean you and i have seen some some great blue cheeses uh through the times i said when i was watching graham prattfield talking about his the bath cheese of course his bath blue won the world cheese awards three or four years ago something like that here it was it was 2014 2000 oh good god we’re feeling old already 2010 in the last uh yet in the last nine years we have had seven blue cheeses that won it seven out of nine yep well of course the most recent one is if david gremel’s the um rogue river blue uh let’s let’s let’s let’s you got some i i have i’ve made i’ve been at the bottom of my cheese drawer i’ve just been keeping it forever but every now and then i have that lovely element you know because it’s of course it’s wrapped in this fantastic syrup um and then it’s been doused in uh brandy in pear brandy i mean this is a remarkable cheese stick it up the camera yeah there you go i mean look let me show it come on stick it get really close this is rogue river you know this is the blue we’re doing we’re dealing blue here and that would be mine it’s not the best looking piece of juice you ever dug out your cheese roll no that was a bit better i mean it’s like it’s still it’s still eating amazing we’re going to taste two cheeses today and one of them actually is um the queso de valdeon which i’m going to put up because to be honest this looks a lot more like rogue river blue than the bit you’re holding yes definitely so this is this is uh a maple leaf or a chestnut leaf i don’t know which apparently you can make it with either but rogue river blue wraps in exactly so i’m going to get nice and close here roger blue wraps in exactly the same way but as  Nigel says they soak those leaves in pelicure which gives it a really cool flavor and intense because it the cheese is so salty and the sweetness just comes in and hits it it’s it’s like having a um uh so turn on your rock for all wrapped into one it’s an amazing cheese and it was a really really worthy winner when we get to the world cheese awards normally by the time you get the last 15 or 16 cheeses it’s really tight but i think you’ll agree with your  Nigel that last year we felt that one coming didn’t we it was an amazing cheese to come in storm at the end well i think just to tell that story very briefly is that um up to the last cheese you know out of whatever worth four thousand the final shoes being that which have been each by the the super jury 16 countries from 13 countries is that the penultimate cheese was the parliamentarian reggiano so of course all the italians made italians yeah thousands most of them from italy so they were and then i did say wouldn’t it be amazing if the last cheese which had happened with kolavka when we were in san sebastian don austria when this norwegian blue cheese came up at the end and the last cheese out of all of them it swept the board and this cheese came and the whole room went quiet because it was it was a dead heat uh and no everyone was looking around but i knew what was gonna happen uh because in the eventuality of a dead heat we talked about it but the chairman of judges would get the counseling vote and then had to retaste for two cheeses and you’re looking at the chairman of judges and of course like 10 film charlie there and our italian tv presenter she was there i couldn’t drink journal um uh in front of the world i knew what i was gonna go for uh but i knew it wasn’t gonna go down well you know yeah the promised land was fantastic but this favorite blue i think with all these cheeses on the day every cheese has a moment in time when it is in perfect condition and that she was just splendid and had a couple of extra layers of flavor and that was what it was but the room when i gave it the rogue river blue from oregon up there in northwest of the united states above california but it was a sublime cheese and after two or three interviews uh john farron obviously organized the world cheese awards through the guild of fine food had to usher me out the back because why are you doing this why next british food and drink the others in league with trump i’m not sure that’s quite true we had i had to head to sicily to take to the match but that’s your wife’s country isn’t it sicily yeah my wife’s half sicilian grew up in italy and her family from baladville famously anti-mafia judges so you had protection that was the key thing i was hiding very well but it was the most remarkable event but blue cheese is again coming through and uh do you know i’m going to remind you a few of the ones we had cornish blue phil stansfield 2010 that was a decade after he started producing this cheese you know after he stopped playing professional rugby he moved from cheshire to um cornwall because the land was cheap uh and eventually there was no money in milking holston friesian cow because the quota had dropped out the markets he was all i’ll make butter i’ll make cheese cheese probably a bit more interesting i’ll make a soft blue cheese that’s particularly accessible he thought rather than stilton to a female palette and he uh produced and ten years later you know and the shoulders went the jaw went because this his whole life just changing a man who would face down you know rugby team of 15 men running his way you know it was a was a bundle of jelly winning the world cheese wars yeah and alex james was there you know and i meant that you alluded to before 2014 and then that amazing craft card ting volt from norway uh in 2016 when we were in um in the basque country uh that was uh with the cheese maker there in his norwegian fisherman’s smock jumper and he came up and he was it was like we didn’t know he was in the audience did we so so we he worked out that he’d won before we’d announced it he was looking at the score and he just jumped up and he was and we were going and we had to we didn’t remember we had to slightly manage the arrival of the local dignitaries to make sure that they you know these things are a big crafted event and this this norwegian in his no very norwegian sweater was on stage it’s me and we heard the fantastic icelandic cry you know he’d been obviously eating the fermented shark and all that and up he came and he picked me up you picked him up it was just and then when we got me you know the uh local politician on from that part of the world it was an amazing yet another amazing night you know but but i’m going early on a drink this by the way is um it’s from biden it’s kentish apple juice this is a worcester uh because if i always as in my non-alcoholic drink i never drink water whenever i’m tasting cheese um with the world cheese awards we have lots of slices of apples to try but i need the acidity of apple juice to cut through um the machine for all of us and obviously if it’s cider even better um i’ve got a little later i’ve got a little bit of um apple county cider here i miss well done to you ben copeland who i know he wants to shift a bit of that at the moment and this is davinet fantastic cider he used to be in the rock and roll business he was a manager for bands but as a tribute this is a bottle i brought back i bought it when we were in don osteria san sebastian and this is a basque cider which i’ve had i brought back because obviously they produce great cider in that part of the world as well and great sheep’s milk cheese is not from the mountains do you remember do you remember the cider coming out of the big barrels where you stand about is it about two three meters back and you have to basically catch the cider as it comes out of it highly recommended those people who haven’t been to san sebastian that part of the basque country they have some awesome food you know we should get on we should get victoria on here to talk about um grape juice um so so and  Nigel we did get sent to you i hope the people yeah and and the the the the beauvail have you got them yeah i’ve got the beauvail and the valdeon um and but do you mean you had a couple of your own strange blues in your fridge as well yeah i have uh indeed um what what while i’m opening them i wanted to talk about it because i was thinking about great cheese makers and some cheese makers it was just great that we had um jamie montgomery on i love that far side chats as well with his family around him it’s a great tradition of as you said you know if he’s comfortable making cheese it worries him because he likes the slight anarchy of it all that’s a great one um but you think of certain people who have made uh cheese roger longman and peter humphries uh from white lake who are serial winners but roger i mean he loves goats he’s got his own uh vlog and what have you but they keep winning prizes with all their cheese service sheeps goats um cows these are just great cheese makers they’re they’re they’ve got a magic touch though too um p humphreys has moved on i don’t know if you’ve heard and he is now looking for i think he’s looking for his next opportunity so if anybody out there who feels that they want to uh support a cheese maker one of the best cheese makers in the country is looking for a stable so there’s an opportunity so what have you got oh shepherd’s purse the buffalo blue yeah that’s a great yeah it’s a fantastic cheese i actually when i tried this um a year ago deliciously yorkshire awards was in there in the final and i tried it and it was just again one of those moments um with like the rogue river is when you just think this cheese this day this moment this hour is just in the best condition and it was one of the finest cheeses i’ve ever tried in my life so i’ve got some i’m on bbc radio london uh on friday i do it live between 11 30 and 12 um with uh robert elms and i’ve got some it’s been delivered to him but absolutely now you don’t know where your camera is  Nigel over over to your right a bit oh that’s good down a bit that’s good oh stop let it soak perfect so what you’re seeing now which is which is very typical of not just buffalo blue but also goat’s milk is is you’ve got that paler color the blue is coming across sort of gray green as well as blue and the these little nuggets of blue rather than the veining but you’ve also got that soft edge which you don’t get with our native stiltons but had been developed quite substantially and you can name other cheeses i mean the black sticks blue which is which is a great cheese about 20 years old at the moment coming out of lancashire is another cheese with that soft rind where you can eat it all the way to the edge and it’s got that softness but it’s also got that strong combination of sweetness the blackest blue has got a it’s using a natto as well which which obviously gives it a bit more sweetness but that buffalo milk is hard to make blue they’re doing a really good job it’s not an easy melt to use no and you know well done to them but that was uh i mean judy bell’s amazing what they’ve achieved there near thirst and now with caroline and katie her daughters they do a fantastic job but talk about blue cheeses here this is from their range okay you ready this is their mrs bell blue that’s sheep’s milk yep there you go and uh sheep this is their blue yeah it’s a harrogate blue i like have you got that one uh the harrogate blue yeah very good you really they sent you a tasting package you know but they just keep winning accolades without and then we’ve got very good change but this is their original cheese you’re shafettle which is a great name are you in good fettle island i’m they’re quite funny about that because they got a huge philip when the uh the cypriots got the pdf for feta that meant none of the british cheese makers could use the word feta anymore um and they managed to get right into into the sort of national papers going oh probably a daily mail special um saying the you know we’re being oppressed by the europeans again but the the pallava records did them huge made it they don’t they think it’s a great cheese but they wouldn’t call it a award winner that they would go for their yorkshire blue or the mrs bells or the buffaloes on there but it’s their best seller because it’s a really good feta style made in the uk that was the first cheese that uh judy bell ever made i think in 1987 i’m gonna interrupt you i’m gonna interrupt you right let’s eat okay yes let me so so so we need to we need to bring into you can choose which one you’re gonna go for first um i’ll go for the buffalo blue okay um i’ve got some here my uh elvis i’m locked in with three barton boys 13 17 and 20. and actually and we are eating our way through a small country every two or three days as you might imagine um my deborah’s she’s very grown up she’s working away a lot eight-hour conferences but actually i look back i’m a lucky man to have this time with the boys they’re not shooting off at the end of the meal they’re not special so i’m ready so sam you can mr sam good job he’s not standing up because he’s your size valley or maybe even taller but here we are we’re both distancing ourselves from that barber just get your hair in there hi yeah how are you doing sam are you keeping your head on straight and arrow i am good so i’m just nibbling away at cheese on the sideline right well let’s choose something and talk about what we’re taking yeah okay so here we go so this is the buffalo blue um which i just think is a great lovely cheese and but it’s it’s oh we haven’t got any buffalo blue all right sorry right let’s give you the whole screen if we can do that i’m not quite sure how this works no wrong one hey we’re coming back we’re coming back here we go here we go oh yeah i’m immediately second to go on it’s a lovely almost like hey there’s an element there is that like a pregnancy from the blue which i like but it’s not overly powerful it’s still quite creamy um and then it’s got quite a nice texture to it like nice bite and then it melts then fills your mouth completely and that’s a beautiful long salty blue finish and it just craves well apple juice for the moment but i’m going to move on to my uh basque slider because i think that would again to cut through the acidity but a beautifully made ease my biggest problem for them is getting hold of the uh the buffalo milk you know where enough words because a lot of the herds have actually switched to uh meat production um because they can make more money out of it than the milk but it does make for an absolutely beautiful cheese and also joe jekta down in hampshire who’s making his mozzarellas and all that kind of thing has um he’s doing very well he’s buying a lot of the buffalo as well so yeah the shortage they don’t milk very much i think i’m getting they might be wrong about this i think we’re talking about seven or eight liters a day so they’re low milkers matriarchal herds they’re amazing i worked on a buffalo farm briefly they are totally one of my favorite animals remember the inglew white buffalo which was in the world cheese was number 12 um in uh last time in bergamo and that was the one from karen lodge in preston in lancashire old family firm of uh cheese producers and farmers been going since uh well the beginning of the last century and that was that was uh muslin cloth bound uh beautiful cheese we had four cheeses today in the top 16 amazing yeah well we’ll talk about that a bit later because the british cheese weekend has really bring brought out the excellent cheese resources right i’m coming back at you i’ve got beauvail okay yeah yeah now this actually i probably should give you the big piece can you see right now this is a cheese made up in uh near melted mowbray by the crop bishop team now they bit like phil stansfield they took the view that they wanted to um bring a more modern take on blue cheese because we’ve dominated so much by the stilton character they wanted softer so they just basically look south east and they picked up a few influences through france and sort of settled on a sort of i think you’re going to call it a british gorgonzola but look at this look at this see how gooey that is that’s fantastic oh like that we like that oh as you undo the wrapper it starts to run away from the wrapper and i just it’s a very tactile cheese and i love ones that are gooey in your fingers and you know this is this is we’re talking cheese sex here and then all virtually anyway charlie you always keep your head on moments like this i noticed that very good richness um from the cow’s milk but uh you know gorgeous rich um really does fill the mouth you know that’s sitting like a contented buddha in my stomach do you think at these lines in advance so you can just chop them out they’re all but i’ve got a whole wall full of them in front of me yeah yeah yeah yeah that’s what a professional is he’s prepared but what i’m getting here is is i think native to british cheeses is a stronger taste of butter and i think that you get that whether you’re in penzance or all the way up in lincolnshire or whatever um and you do get that with this and also we get a a an intelligent use of bitterness which is something that is quite an adult flavor so i really enjoy that but it’s the creaminess and the spice the blue that brings that sort of quadrant of flavors together that is really impressive and i love it it’s it’s interesting because we used to get this when i was cheese a cheese seller and we found that if we bought the little one and a half kilo wedges the flavor didn’t didn’t mature you didn’t get the same uh texture we had to buy the wheels and some cheeses are just like that they need to stay big and stay big for as long as possible and then when you cut into them they deliver and i think that’s one of the reasons why you will so often get a better flavor out of a deli environment and not a pre-pack environment where you can cut a slice from a big cheese and taste it there and then and take it home and i think that that always always but nearly always outperforms yeah i think that’s been one of the big problems recently as well with the supermarkets who’ve been selling cheese but they closed their deli counters down so a lot of the artisans who would sell truffles whole cheeses haven’t cut then we’re having to send them out as packaged up smaller pieces which obviously is very labor intensive expensive so it reduces the margin but also it doesn’t show the cheeses off as well for exactly the reasons that you just alluded to and i think that’s a big point i it’s it’s i don’t want to go into the maths but the problem with delhi’s is you need to charge more to make up for the fact you’ve got a smaller number of products in a bigger area with people serving the mass just go a bit ugly which means you’ve got to out perform on the flavor front to make the customer want that now for lots of us that’s our awesomeness um and that’s why i think there will always be a space for the artisan cheese cheese cheese mongers and and they represent the cheese makers that we’ve been looking at over the beginning right are you ready to go for the next one yeah what’s that let’s here we go this is a worcester blue extra it’s called clementine right not this from aubry allen uh because of course famous butchers they are uh simon smith and all the crew they’re actual we know them for their cheeses from simeon hudson uh yeah and simeon hudson evans to give him his proper double barrel name and then guy dimmers um who also helps him out and that is and that’s the worcester black country cheese and it’s actually from heath grange farm which is at lower abroad he’s worcester but i’ve been tackling that the last few days and having a slice every night and again beautiful cheese it it does look quite quite interesting you’ve got it looks like it’s beginning to dry up and you’re going to get cracks with the uh yeah with the incursion there so so you need to do that quite quickly and if you let it come to room temperature about half an hour it’s still got enough melt in it and that’s the point but little slivers of that i’ve just been leaving around the house and the kids just scooping them up as they go around which is uh you know it beats doing delicious i want to move on to our second uh announced cheese because um ruth at the fine cheese company sent me my bit of cheese two weeks ago and then yesterday had a little bit of a kind of wobble going i’m not sure it’s still gonna be good enough so she sent me another piece that arrived today so i’ve got two cheeses that are identical but two weeks apart so i’m going to start with this one i don’t think that’s got a pale whitish character you can see the needling that’s gone through clearly on one side and this is the case of the guardian and this is the one that’s two weeks older and i don’t know if you could see that clearly now to my eye in the without you having to peer through the internet’s lens um the the older one is considerably grayer now one of the characteristics of goat’s milk blue cheese is is that they go gray at age which can put people off and it’s just a color it is not flavor i mean flavors will develop with age as well but there it’s not an indication of being off so this cheese and the classic one here of course um uh is is it goes really big and comes from the same area and  Nigel you remember this is the cabrella do you remember the cabrillo oh yeah yeah yeah brutal cheese brutal cheese get it wrong taste it it’s wrong it’s got this chewing aluminium tuning tin foil kind of taste but get it right it’s the explosion of dangerous flavors now this guy the quesadilla dion is is full flavored more reliable in that sense and it’s a it’s an amazing chip so i’m going in what have you what do you think when you’re tasting it now i’m getting alpine pastures on that one because of cows who’ve had a good summer because it’s got that depth and creaminess to it but there’s that lovely again punchy saline hits but in a controlled way and it comes at you in layers and uh i’m liking these layers i actually have my my cheese when in the theater you have a dresser to get all your costumes ready for quick change i have my cutter on my left so he’s uh sam’s doing a good job so i just passed the cheese in and he has quite a good slug of it himself i have to say amazon but it’s a great way of doing it but again just to see the cheeses once you’ve got much room temperature and then that’s the key because cheese coming out of the fridge it tastes good but give it a bit of time and then keep trying it’s like a case of clarets if you have a bottle every year for 12 years because i mean who who has six bottle cases will be 12 you can see the the uh but the growth and certainly with cheeses during the hour an hour and a half that they come to room temperature they change style a lot and it’s something we should remember yeah it’s true and different cheeses respond in different ways yeah it looks about charlie i i like it but going back to your point of like context means a lot it would be difficult to go backwards from this picos blue it’s a very um mouth-dominating cheese i am getting metallic notes it’s got a grittiness inside the blue of almost like you’re tasting the minerality straight from the picosteroid those those mountains where it’s made and this is this is a long keeping cheese which they keep in those in those caves in those mountains it’s got a real a real character but it’s it’s it’s it’s not a subtle cheese it’s it’s sort of i don’t make it sound aggressive it’s kind of shouting in your face going pay attention to me i’m a big cheese this is the moment start eating start drinking that kind of kind of thing that sounds like you charlie um but but also when you would have that in your cheese board that’s the key but you don’t have it because it’s going to crucify everything that comes after it what would you drink with with both your blues that you’ve had um i well it’s interesting because i think that the um the beauvail is quite forgiving you could go for a number the wines they’re done okay um you can go for a number of of of wines with the bluebell because it’s not got that high saltness it’s not got that business got um the the acidity kind of thing so i think anything with a sweet bend would work like the so turns of this world but i also think like a warm red like with decent fruit notes would be very good um with this uh picaster valdeon you’re going to need something that’s got more i think your cider your side up particularly if it’s um particularly the sweeter end of the spectrum would work very well um but i’ve got quite an a a tannic um a wine here when i it’s holding up nicely against it as well so well there you go i’ve um i’ve gone down to the jurassic coast because i’ve got a light bay and this is their sandbar and they are producing some great wines this is absolutely lime bay winery in devon it’s one of our top ends and um i just think it’s a beautifully well made but you you can taste the almost the sea vegetables in amongst all the sanford and everything it’s got that little herbaceous bite to it but it’s got enough crisp acidity and minerality to cut through the richness please oh well well there you go it’s interesting when you look at food and drink matching um the cheese has changed so much that actually cheese at a young age same cheese at young age will want different matches to what it wants of knowledge there is no point in in over guessing you’re best opening a few bottles trying the one that works and just settling down you know winging it to use technical term i love the fact that the the world cheese awards are older than the great taste awards you know but bob ferrand uh put him up john’s dad uh and you know he should be 32 it’s been this would have been the 33rd year and uh it’s just and let’s hope it still might happen you know but we might be heading off to you know northwest uh spain later in the year it’s going to take a bit of doing but they’re a great community and for us i i always think it it’s the extended families gathering you know and it’s a bit like you know you’ve got the naughty cousins and what have you so it’s a bit like coronation street meets emmerdale with a bit of breaking bad you know and happy birthday reading coronation street meets evidence you winged that one and that’s just that’s that’s that’s mass crap it’s good i thought that was quite so okay i’ll give you yes a different kind of crack um uh right hang on a second sharing is caring everyone if you’ve got you you do that’s very clever you’ve got a very glamorous assistant we can’t see but i can imagine yeah i i i i i must tell you that the first date with my wife um yes um i have to say i recommend it all these um this is better than um uh than the older version and in fact both the younger ones are good please bring in your yeah we’re not alone but well done to you for putting charlie and lockdown yeah yeah right now um we’ve actually got pat arrived are you ready i’m the google’s with us and we’ve also not taken any questions so we need Tracey back to keep us on the straight narrow there and let’s bring pat in let me let me introduce pat mcgregor to everyone mcgregor is the father although he frankly doesn’t look old enough of the british cheese and a lot of other friends like london cheese month uh you briefly described yourself as the uk’s only cheese journalist until a few other cheese journalists decided that really wasn’t on um but otherwise tell us about your week pat my what sorry my week your week this week isn’t it Tracey after uh the weekend i mean the weekender the british cheese weekend there was um it was it was amazing it was three days of online uh talks and tastings from the countries you know great cheese lovers and experts uh yourself included charlie and  Nigel um we had cheese makers cheese mongers and the whole point of the festival was to to sort of raise awareness of the crisis that’s facing small cheese makers in this country and shift a bit of cheese that’s what we really wanted to do is to sell more cheese and it i think it’s been quite successful it seems to you know i’ve been hearing from cheese makers and cheese mongers that they sold quite a lot in the run-up to the festival which is absolutely brilliant um so yeah it was it was great fun you know you organize stuff like this and then it starts happening and it just sort of has a life of its own and it was really good fun just as a as a punter tuning in to watch these brilliant talks you know yeah and i think it’s fun i don’t know what charlie’s doing with the magic finger but that frightens me um i wish i brought my cheese on because it goes straight into patrick’s head actually um one of the people from one of your courses is just saying hi patrick uh sangeet cow core hello hello um sorry you’ve got some statistics of uh what happened over the weekend and how people have done it i just i i will just feed back to you as well um someone is suggesting sorry i didn’t catch their name is uh with the valdeon peacos blue um pedro vimenez sherry there it goes um yeah that sounds awesome doesn’t it great i’d love that it’s like yeah if we’re rolling into british cheese weekend uh so over the three days um we had nearly 8 000 visitors just under 8 000 visitors to the to the website so that and then people viewing for through the website so that’s fantastic 8 000 people all logging on over a bank holiday weekend just to listen and hear about cheese and they were from the majority obviously were from the uk um the next top country was the usa and then um japan and then canada and then china but in all we had people viewing from 107 countries keeping it to london on your london centric uh festival it was global so if i can interrupt you and i i’d like to start with um now i hope i’m gonna make this work this is this is charlie trying to be tech i’ve got introduced with andy swinsko so i’m gonna start with him because he’s sort of he has a nice sort of summation so let’s see if we can make this work are we ready good afternoon i’m andy from the coyote and as part of the british cheese weekend that i’m going to be talking about british cheese revival and how we’ve gone from nothing to the vast array of farmhouse street makers we’ve got now which is fabulous if i’ve been doing this talk 15 years ago we’ve been talking about some fabulous final cheeses that still meant today that absolutely likes montgomery cheddar king jedi and small amazon producers like carlson master stilton but there wasn’t any of them the british cheese industry was on farm was very small and very negligible it was kind of not really existing and in the last 15 years we have seen resurgence so the corridor day really about 35 cheeses of which 33 have come about since the year 2000. i mean andy is a is a legend in his in his own county um uh let me just put him away um but i think that that introduction says a lot pat in lots of ways isn’t it the the cheese we’re celebrating now a lot of the cheese was celebrated now have been created by the very people who are still making them yeah i mean you know the cheese revival in britain started around the sort of late 80s but really kicked on in the sort of 90s and early 90s for various reasons to do with milk quotas and the milk marketing boards you know being disbanded so that farmers didn’t get a set price for their milk and suddenly they weren’t getting much money for the milk so they said we better turn into something else and cheese was the thing um so it’s been this the british cheese scene has been this amazing success story really over the past 20 years 15 20 years and so when coronavirus hit you know we were at risk of losing and still are at risk of losing this amazing success story of an industry almost overnight you know i was talking to cheese makers i wrote an article for the telegraph about this and sort of phone lots of cheese makers you know they had like 40 tons of soft cheese in their cellar and literally overnight lost 85 percent of their sales so you know i think we’ve come out of that period thanks to like jamie oliver’s done a lot to promote um you know people buying cheese from small cheese makers the cheese weekend uh you know articles from jenny linford and other journalists you know all of us on twitter and instagram or banging on about it i think that’s really helped and and that that cheese has been shifted now that backlog but you know the restaurants are not coming back anytime soon so we need to keep going the british cheese weekender was brilliant and we all had a lot of fun and i i had a cheesy coma by the end of it which was which was nice but um under the eyes yeah yeah yeah it’s like you go a bit psychedelic you know it’s like one of those hard judging days at the world cheese awards but we’ve got to keep doing it because until the restaurants come back these cheese makers still need our support um and it’s so easy that’s what i think it’s like you can be virtuous and help this brilliant small individual of great characters and family businesses and in return you get to eat loads of delicious cheese it’s a complete win situation um so i think that as a message of like you know do your bit for the country and eat loads of delicious cheese you can’t go wrong really but what i think that you see um in the british cheese making community is there is no resistance to innovation is there no so that they’re bringing in recipes from all around the world matching them to we’ve got lots of different breeds going on in the in in the cows and the sheep and all those things that we’re making and they’re using technologies i mean  Nigel you and i went to see those classic uh idiot apple uh cheese makers in san sebastian people have been making it the same way uh pat you’re with us as well actually weren’t we yeah it’s a good day though it was fun um but it wasn’t none of that technology was new was it i mean those are they have they can match what they’re doing right down the line and i’ve just got another clip here of um let me just uh change of of tom calver now he’s got a uh very traditional cheese in that it’s a it’s a cheddar um but in other ways he’s really innovating so i’m just going to pop this up here and see if we can make it go so hang on a second right here we go you ready we have the turn the cheese turning right up turning a cheese over is a necessary job but actually the physical act of turning lava there’s nothing about that but he got six thousand jesus to turn over it’s just hurts [Music] with the introduction of tina the turner we are able to taste through every single cheese within that faction if you think about this as a great big library of flavor every single cheese has its own unique identity too much these days you’re looking at consistency and trying to make sure that everything tastes like you had it yesterday and the day before and the day before that how do they it’s not that inspiring is it i mean i mean that to me that says it all you’ve got basically a young man although beginning to think everyone’s younger to me who’s taken one of our greatest and most historical products and brought in he’s built he’s built his cellar into a into a hillside from scratch um and then covered it with earth and he has a stream coming in through the back wall that uses and uses that to cool the things down and he’s brought in a 21st century bit of kit to turn cheese it’s never been done before in the uk for cheddars and he is allowing so that it gets him closer to being able to grade and understand and promote as he puts a library of flavor into it and the way it’s never been done before i mean that’s brilliant yeah i think the point there as well i mean i love the fact tina the turner uh is what i mean just the humor that comes through the cheese industry as well i mean it is it’s food and drink it’s something we we should love but there’s great heritage but also there’s a marvelous uh modernity to it as well but you see the two coming together and we witnessed that this weekend but there’s some great people and i was um tasting some cheese uh martin dot nicola robinson anderson james that they make at home estate uh and and he was of course uh influenced by james aldridge as a young lad and he went on to get the award for the best and pasteurized raw milk cheese and this is fantastic they’ve got their own flock of sheep there a hundred of them and these are the sticky wash rinds cheeses that they they wash them in brine they do it three or four times a week for a month really old traditions but with modern technology and and and and as champion people like by andy and kathy swinsko the courtyard dairy they sell it um because production isn’t high but when you taste these things it’s like a great piece of chocolate you don’t need a lot of it you just think that is amazing and it transports you to another part of the world or another memory and these are just remarkable tastes captured in a piece of cheese but just so much more than that and the great brilliant eccentricity and also the the talent that’s available to us now we nearly lost our great cheese makers it’s like why camera came together with our beer industry in these early 70s we had about 30 40 um breweries left we’ve got two and a half thousand now and we’ve nearly lost our century and thank goodness it’s come back and this weekend we never thought it was gonna happen pat and Tracey but you did a great job showcasing some of these remarkable people Tracey i wondered what did what were your highlights of the particular videos and talks that you really love well i was just saying to the boys before um i loved when salomon salmon his family did the cheese and wine for children and it was just awesome how they handled that what what is cheese and wine for children that needs explaining so they had really really good properties proper good artisanal cheese and then sam had paired it with like nice tonight some apple juice and he’d got some um i can’t remember the pairings now but he’s got some black currant and he’s got some just various sausages perry cola wasn’t it he did a cherry cola oh yeah yeah cherry cola and um but it was awesome and his children were so well behaved but then the highlight of it was that they managed to get in sound effects with cheese tasting because they added crisps to the cheese sandwich and sam’s little boy all he kept saying was listen listen you can hear the french think the bronco is brilliant i’ve got to tell you Tracey right before i came down as i if i’m coming because i’m in the shed at the bottom of my garden where i work this is my cheese shed um i thought about have some cheese to taste so i picked up some uh some sharpened um wash porn which is a sheep’s milk cheese and i was thinking about that and i got some crisps as well and all i could find was thai chili uh crisps this is the last bit left do you know what it’s quite a good match it’s quite it really is it’s so hard i think we need a gym tonight it would be great fun i think we could have fun with that yeah because we’ve got john farron is going to join us to make it’s not a party without gate crashers johnny there’s always one isn’t it oh he’s very amazing this guy’s bumping up can you hear us jp the mute off okay we’re gonna wait we’re gonna wait for him to interrupt us for those that don’t know john i’m sure many of you do john uh runs the guild of my food which makes him the the lead the lead cheese the biggest cheese for the world cheese awards the great taste awards uh technological issues um as you can see um my daughter’s birthday only this week what a week uh your birthday with some wonderful cheese how are we all good have you have you managed to catch up with any of the uh the videos and events and the cheese tastings over the weekend john yes i did yep uh i watched my friend  Nigel barden uh on friday evening um and i joined one a tour of um quicks uh something with uh the truth owens but yeah no and and then we had a sunday night kind of uh regroup and conclusion with um the lovely Tracey the lovely pat and the lovely catherine so that was all very jolly jolly good um so so um the reason that you’ve joined us today is you will be with us next month next tuesday for tuesday night is cheese night and when we’re going to be talking great british crumblies um but i’m hoping we’ll also get a chance for you to tell us about the world cheese awards because that’s uh organized um an event you’ve been leading well not personally for 28 years 30 years but it’s quite an institution now and  Nigel and i can talk about the the chat at the front but we’re hoping to give you some you’re going to give us about where these cheeses come from who’s competing who’s winning that kind of thing um yeah love to i i um listened earlier on and you were saying uh about the wonderful victoria arresting um well well one of the things that i’ve seen a comment from david green greenwell possibly for pat here will we do it again next year oh Tracey’s jason’s shaking head um i i don’t know i really don’t know i mean literally we jason i haven’t it’s trace Tracey and i put i’ve been there sort of done a lot of the heavy lifting with support of the guild and the academy and the um the sca but um i don’t know i mean it seemed to go so well what i liked about it which i was thinking you could do a live event maybe next year hopefully you know if you’re out of lockdown we could do something where we could all get together and do it but one of the nice things about me doing it online was you could go into the farms it was so lovely to see cornwall you know line of dairies or then go over to suffolk and see fen farm so there’s something quite special about being able to you know mary quick did a talk on matching cheddar with salad leaves which i thought on paper was not going to be the greatest absolutely brilliant in her kitchen with her husband talking about the salad she’d grown and matching it with cheddar and i was like of course salad leaves so stuff like that was really nice so i don’t know i think we we need to work work on it really well well well david david suggests annual we’ve got yey zeus here upping the ante hello she’s went soon maybe you can make it two or three times a year i’ll see jesus what do you think Tracey i think we could need some very very big sponsors so if you’d like to come forward now patrick i have to i have to let you all understand that patrick amongst these three and a half weeks that we did this in was also homeschooling his children so i wasn’t allowed to talk to him until break time or lunch before after he had his fact behind the shed the bike sheds yeah and um so it was a little bit shaky there was a thank god for whatsapp is all i can say you did a great job and i think considering what you did in such a short space of time it doesn’t all go very well for the future being you know pre-recorded live all the different things people around the world the potential i mean um look at us on our split five screens you know it just shows what what is possible and the technology in in six weeks we’ve advanced six years you know so uh amazing and look at john cat in the hat what he’s achieved you know putting this away we’ve had some amazing feedback as well today from around the world i think i’ve forwarded a few to you patrick um from texas um from australia were watching and you autumn boys john barron and pat at the bottom of our screens you missed before i was saying we had people viewing from um from 107 countries [Laughter] are you sitting comfortably john i think john’s on things on a delay yes obviously the internet is moving slowly in dorset i was going to say that that international thing is is probably quite important because actually exports for british cheese are really really important for these small cheese makers um and that that’s fallen off of cliff face along with all the restaurant trade but actually exports you know i know for a lot of the cheddar guys exports can be 30 or 40 of their sales to the us so you know keeping keeping sort of british g’s in in the in the global mind is is a good thing i think going forward because i think well no one can speak better for the internationalism of of cheese now than john he deals with yeah uh that one i think okay um then when you routinely get 33 34 countries sending cheeses and those are the only the ones that allow the lots of cheeses the countries that can’t send cheeses to your world cheese awards john i think we should do a dance while it gets there you know we’re [Music] okay i think i think he’s singing he could be just be singing i still think he’s on the loo we’re on that wonderful note i’m gonna say thank you very much to all the people uh who’ve joined us tonight um thank you very much  Nigel you’ve been with us for an hour thank you very much your time say say hello to your wonderful family for giving us this thank you Tracey as always keeping us on straight now pat congratulations for a great weekend you look as yeah bizarrely both fresh and tired which i don’t know uh so fantastic it’s actually over 40 countries um that entered last year um would like to end we yeah we’ve broken down some real barriers over the last well thank you all the people who are watching thank you of course we could do this and chat and mix ourselves as we do perhaps but um thank you very much we will have sorted out our i.t with the great john farron by next week we won’t have an hour’s uh uh episode just to listen to three comments um and uh so on that note i’m gonna sign off from us all so we’re gonna do the university challenge thing and say good night everybody good night love you all bye