Cashel Blue Cheese
Cashel Blue Cheese is produced on the family farm of the Grubb family in Beechmount, Fethard, Co. Tipperary. The farm has been in the Grubb family for generations and is now owned by Louis and his daughter Sarah, her husband Sergio and their young family - keeping yet another generation going. In the early 70s, Louis, having returned to take charge of the home farm from his mother, he started a commercial dairy herd. He purchased cows locally and in the north of Ireland. With the wisdom and knowledge of his
wife Jane and seeing that there was a gap in this market, he looked into producing a blue cheese. Jane perfected the recipe from the comfort of her own kitchen in a small cheese vat. The recipe developed then is still the same today. As the market for the cheese started to grow and with a greater demand on sales and production, Pat Morrissey was employed as farm manager in the late 80s so that Louis could turn all his time to production and sales. At that time the milk from the herd was mainly going to Glanbia, known then as Avonmore, with mobile tanks being sent over for cheese production every second day. Two others were employed alongside Jane 60
in cheese production. That has since expanded to over twenty full time employees and six part time at Cashel Blue today. As the demand for this creamy, soft, blue cheese increased, Geurt Van den Dikkenburg, a native of the Netherlands, was employed as head cheese-maker in 1991. Increasingly, more and more of the farm milk was going into cheese production. Today, all the milk from the dairy herd goes to cheese production. Sarah and Sergio returned to take an active part in the growing business with markets being developed further and afield in America, North America, mainland Europe and Australia. Cashel Blue is still highly sought in the UK. On her visit to Ireland in 2012, Queen Elizabeth II was served Cashel Blue at the State Banquet in Dublin, of which she spoke very highly afterwards.