Pitched somewhere between cheddar and Alpine cheeses, Lincolnshire Poacher has become a modern British classic in the 30 years since its creation. As TOM DALE discovers, its success is a testament to the mantra of continuous improvement followed by brothers Tim and Simon Jones – not to mention their ability to roll with the times.
How the Joneses kept up FOR ONE OF BRITAIN’S older and more well-known farmhouse cheesemakers, striking the right balance between yearround consistency and artisan methods is something that has taken nearly 30 years – and it’s still a work in progress, according to Lincolnshire Poacher’s Tim Jones. When it comes to the flavour in a raw milk cheese like Poacher, the terroir contributes a great deal. But in the UK, a large shift in flavour profile is bound to occur between the summer and winter makes, 10
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because pasture feeding is not possible throughout the year. To bring the seasonal variations closer together, the Lincolnshire Wolds-based cheesemakers feed their herd of 230 Holstein Friesian cows on a mix of pasture and buffer feed year-round. “When we made our cheese with purely pasture-fed milk, we ended up with this sort of wild flavour that didn’t taste as we thought Lincolnshire Poacher should,” Tim says. “But when we add ration to the feed, we
get more consistency.” This is just one of the many small changes that have contributed to the evolution of the award-winning Alpine-style “cheddar-not-cheddar” we know today. Back in February 1992, Tim’s brother Simon began production on the first batch of a then-nameless cheese in an outbuilding on the fourth-generation family farm. Ulceby Grange Farm had been in the family since 1917, but it wasn’t until the 1960s, when the business was taken over by the Jones
