Ewe's Milk Cheese and Wine, Yes Indeed!

A little different from me, but this story begins with a visit I made to a sheep farmer with my brother over 20 years ago, as my brother was writing about Ewe's Milk Cheese made from a rare Belgian breed of sheep for The Bulletin, an English language magazine based in Brussels (website). I shall get straight to the point, we visited Peter at the Bergerie d'Acremont (website) in the Ardennes (above), and there's a whole load of anecdotal stuff for another day, but we were treated to an array of excellent varying stages of maturation ewe's/sheep's milk cheeses, including a wonderful flavoursome hard cheese and a softer brie-like cheese, some of which I bought from his stall at a market in Leuven on my next visit to Belgium. It was mature, the rest of the people on my train home must have wondered where the aroma was coming from! 😉

Back to here and now, and me buying 4 of the 5 ewe's milk cheeses available on my last visit to Penbuckles in Hastings (website), bottom image. You'll realise I do like ewe's milk cheeses, but I shall begin with a brief reflection on the wine I bought to accompany my cheese tasting, and it went very well with the cheeses indeed! From Italy's Biscardo winery near Verona (website), their 13.5% Neropasso, made from partially dried Corvina, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, a deep ruby red wine with a cherry and plum fruity aroma and taste, slightly spicy, smooth and rich, and so easy to drink accompanying the cheese, recommended! 👍

So, to the cheeses, starting with bottom left in my photograph with the reddish border. the Sussex Ewe, which I think is made by High Weald Dairy (website), apologies if I'm wrong, I'll check and correct on my next visit to Penbuckles. Wherever it comes from it's really nice and tasty, a harder cheese with a slightly nutty flavour that brought a little chill to my cheeks, nice one!

Going anticlockwise in the photograph, so bottom right, is the Wigmore, from Village Maid of Berkshire I do believe (website), a brie-like softer cheese, creamy with a very mild slightly sweet taste, VERY easy to eat! 😁

So, to the last 2 cheeses starting with, in the top right of the 4 cheeses, from the more local The Traditional Cheese Dairy at Waldron in East Sussex (website) and their Lord of the Hundreds. A harder ewe's milk cheese, with a slightly nutty taste, quite strong and flavoursome, and again that chill to the cheeks I get from a more mature cheese, I really liked this! 😁

My final cheese, top left in the photograph, was from Devon and the Ticklemore Cheese Company (website), and their Beenleigh Blue. This blue cheese is lighter and sweeter than most blue cheeses I've tasted, but certainly has plenty of flavour, a little creamy, and yet again I got that nice wee chill in my cheeks, nice one! An overall pleasant 'tasting' thankyou. 👍

It's a hard job, but someone has to do it! 😉