When
I was researching for the project I discovered a lot
of interesting thing about Irish food. I like Irish cheeses
but I didn't know that there is so many cheese makers and cheese
brands in Ireland.
The
history of Irish farmstead cheeses is an ancient story. The
Irish word for cheese – cáis – is itself an ancient term, and
throughout Irish history milk and milk products – referred to as
ban-bhia, or white-meats – were central to the traditional Irish
diet.
The
Irish are the greatest lovers of milk I ever met”, wrote the
traveller and writer John Stevens at the end of the 17th century and,
in addition to cow’s milk, the Irish also milked deer, goats and
sheep.
From
the milk they made a number of varieties of cheese, including tanach,
a hard-pressed cheese made from skim-milk; tath, a soft cheese made
from heated sour-milk curds, which was likely similar to many modern
Irish farmstead cheeses.
Today,
you can travel to every part of Ireland and encounter an interesting,
distinctive, local farmstead cheese.
The farmsteaders have moved from being keen amateur cheesemakers to hard-working professionals whose labour of love produces some of the best known luxury food brands in Ireland, and the world: Milleens; Durrus; Cashel Blue; St Tola; Knockdrinna, the list of beautifully crafted and fashioned Irish artisan cheeses can stretch on and on.
Irish
farmhouse cheeses are the product of unique interactions between
people, place and pasture. Farmhouse cheeses are produced across the
country yet each cheese is an expression of its own particular part
of Ireland, encapsulating very different elemental aspects of our
native landscape. Milleens offers a taste of the wild, salty
winds of the Atlantic; Coolea conjures soft rain on mountain slopes;
Kerrygold Cashel Blue is the expression of lush sweet grasses in
hills and valleys; whilst St Tola is redolent of wild herbs in rocky
limestone fields.
Yet
Irish farmhouse cheese is not just about flavour, it is also about
people. In Ireland each artisan cheese is unique to a particular
cheesemaker. The transparency of this connection between producer,
cheese and the place is the key characteristic of Irish farmhouse
cheese.
I recently found an interesting article about Irish cheese awards. The link is below.
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