cheesewire
Billy Kevan, who joined in 2000, is just the fourth head cheese-maker in the dairy’s 100-year history
A century of the blues
Interview This year, Colston Bassett celebrates a centenary of Stilton production in its rural Nottinghamshire dairy. PATRICK McGUIGAN finds out how making the famous blue has changed over the years.
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he residents of sleepy Nottinghamshire village Colston Bassett have been partying hard (by sleepy village standards) this year to mark the 100th anniversary of the famous Stilton producer in their midst. So far, there’s been a thanksgiving church service, a village fun day and a visit from Princess Anne to mark a century of cheese-making at Colston Bassett Dairy, with a fireworks display yet to come. It’s fitting that the company has been so keen to involve the village in the celebrations when you consider its history. The Stilton-maker was set up by the the local community as a farmers’ co-operative in 1912 (production started the year after), after the village doctor managed to persuade 40 of his patients to invest a combined total of £1,000 in a new dairy, which would support local farms. It remains a co-operative today and has only had four head cheesemakers throughout its history: Tom Coy, Ernie Wagstaff, Richard Rowlett and the incumbent Billy Kevan – a straight talking Scot who took over the production hot seat in 2000. He could have been forgiven for feeling the weight of history on his shoulders, but Kevan oversaw
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September 2013 · Vol.14 Issue 8
some major changes after taking over, installing air conditioning and extending the packing room, dairy and cold storage. “When I started they were making 94 cheeses a day on average,” he tells FFD. “Although they made good cheese through the year, they weren’t making good cheese every day. It was my job to improve consistency.” Today, the dairy produces an average of 177 cheeses each day, but has not sacrificed traditions such as hand-ladling the curds, which gives its Stilton and Shropshire Blue a velvety texture and rounded flavour. Standard Colston Basset Stilton is made with vegetarian rennet, although the company does make special batches with animal rennet and longer maturation times for Neal’s Yard. A raw milk Stilton is not an option for the London cheesemonger because under the terms of the cheese’s Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) it can only be made with pasteurised milk. Colston Bassett was actually the last Stilton maker to use raw milk, but switched after a food safety scare in 1988, which also prompted the Stilton Cheese Makers Association (SCMA) to enshrine the principle of pasteurisation in law. That didn’t stop Randolph
Hodgson of Neal’s Yard, however, who teamed up with Joe Schenider to open a dairy on the Welbeck Estate making a blue cheese to a Stilton recipe with raw milk, which they called Stichelton. Earlier this year Schneider applied to Defra to have the Stilton PDO changed to allow the use of unpasteurised milk, so that Stichelton could be classed as a Stilton. Kevan is fighting the proposal in his role as the chairman of the SCMA. “You’ve got lots of pathogenic bacteria in milk that will potentially survive the cheese-making process. People can be caught out,” he says. “With pasteurisation you know you have a clean starting point and then you can make the cheese equally as well as anyone who is making cheese with unpasteurised milk.” He argues that the benefits of using raw milk to make cheese have been overplayed. “People see the past through rose-coloured glasses. They think if they follow exactly how it was done 100 years ago, it’s going to taste better than it does now. Well, we make improvements in scientific developments and technology has moved on.” Defra is also currently considering a separate amendment to the PDO, which proposes to
expand the area in which the cheese can be made to include the village of Stilton in Cambridgeshire. A local historian and pub owner are trying to get the rules changed because they say records show Stilton was once made in the village. The SCMA says that although a cheese called Stilton might have been made there at one time, it was nothing like the soft blue of today. “I think they are trying to regenerate interest in the village of Stilton. I don’t think they are interested in the product Stilton,” Kevan says. “We are trying to protect what we feel has a certain provenance.” Away from PDO controversy, other pressing issues for Kevan include soaring milk prices, which are being driven by demand from abroad, a shrinking supply base and rising farm input costs. A hike in the price of Stilton is likely in October, he says. There are also plans to extend the dairy’s maturation rooms next year. “We’re trying to make what we have better,” he says. “We’ll reach a point where we don’t want to get any bigger. We’re nearly there now. We don’t want to be making 10 times what we do now and selling it to the supermarkets.” www.colstonbassettdairy.co.uk