Sparkenhoe Red Leicester

I have sold Red Leicester cheese for almost 4 years, but it was never really a cheese that interested me much. I suppose I dismissed it as little more than a brightly coloured cheddar style cheese.
However, a few days ago, upon opening a 9 month old cheese from Sparkenhoe farm, I change my mind on the cheese.

Sparkenhoe Red Leicester made 01/11/10

This was a cheese with depth and complexity.
The rind was thick, well formed and musty from its long ageing in Sparkenhoe's cheese store, and the curd was nutty, savoury and biscuity - like browned butter.
Sparkenhoe farm is situated on the Leicestershire/Warwickshire border, and is the only producer of a raw milk, traditionally cloth-bound Leicester cheeses in the county of Leicestershire.



So the only REAL Red Leicester cheese for me. 

The majority of Red Leicester is made from pooled (milk from many farms)and pasteurised milk in big creameries in Somerset. Formed in big blocks, shrink-wrapped in plastic and matured for only a few weeks, those cheeses are little more than a shaddow of the cheeese made at Sparkenhoe farm.

Sparkenhoe only makes cheese using milk from the farm's 160 strong herd of Holstein Friesian cows, which spend their whole life on the farm, grazing the green pastures of middle England grass and clover.
This sweet, rich milk is pumped into the dairy each morning where it has the addition of annatto - a pure extract from the jugle berry, Bixa Orellana, to give the cheese the characteristic deep orange colour. The milk is soured, and then coagulated with traditional calves rennet.
The curds are then cut, scalded, stirred, and drained, before being cut into blocks and stacked in order to realase more whey from the curd structure. Next, the curds are milled and salted, constantly being hand mixed to stop the mass of curds knitting together and to lower the temperature of the curd before being pressed into cheese. 
Once out of the cheese press, Sparkenhoe is a large, impressive cheese; a 20kg flat wheel, likened to a mill-stone in shape. The new cheeses are coated in lard and a layer of cloth, to form a proper rind on the cheese, protecting it over the 6-9 month long ageing period, where the cheeses are rubbed, turned and flipped on beechwood shelves.
Leicester may often be likened to a Cheddar, or perhaps more accuratly, a Cheddar style, but it is really one of our traditional territorial cheeses; it is a superbly traditional England cheese.

A final note on the cheesey history of Sparkenhoe farm - Leicester cheese was being made on the farm from 1745-1879, using milk from dairy longhorn cattle, a popular dairy breed in the Midlands at that time.
Production ceased due to "no money in cheese manufacture".

6 years ago, the current farmers of Sparkenhoe, Jo and David Clarke started making Leicester cheese once again due to the lack of money to be made in producing liquid milk. 
How things change.

New additions to the Sparkenhoe herd