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MEET THE MAKER: LINCOLNSHIRE POACHER
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 avour in a raw milk cheese like Poacher, the terroir contributes a great deal. But in the UK, a large shi in avour pro le is bound to occur between the summer and winter makes, 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 bu er feed year-round.
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 rst 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
brothers’ father, Richard, that they began dairying.
“It’s unheard of in this part of the country,” says Tim, “But dad gured that grass was a good break crop and manure is good for the whole farm.” And, taking this holistic approach to farming proved to be the beginnings of a now-iconic cheese.
When Simon Jones returned to the farm in 1988 a er attending agricultural college, there “wasn’t much for him to do,” says Tim. In the ’70s, Lye Cross Farm’s John Alvis had told Richard Jones to give cheesemaking a go. “Dad held that thought but never did it, so when the boy came back it was the perfect opportunity,” says Tim.
Simon spent two years visiting makers and taking courses before returning to Lincolnshire to start syphoning o 1,000 litres of milk once a week.
“I was looking back at some old make sheets and it’s shocking how di erent the recipe was back then,” Tim says.
In the early days, the cheeses were sold at nine months. Now, the youngest are sold at 17-and-a-half months. Tim tells Good Cheese that the amount of packet starter used in production is now around a quarter of what it was in the ’90s, as they now rely more heavily on the raw milk’s natural ora for acidi cation, slowing the entire process and “allowing the milk to speak more”.
The curds are now cut ner, and dried more, leading to a harder, drier cheese – steps which have steered the product away from its cheddar-like beginnings and toward its more Alpine leanings today.
“We’re slowing everything down. Initially, the acidi cation and, as a result, the maturation,” says Tim. “Now, at nine months, our cheese has very little to it avour-wise.
“We’re doing all the things you shouldn’t do in business. Storing more cheese, keeping it for longer and drying it out more. But business was faced with pallets of Poacher being returned to the farm, and the buyer for its excess milk pulling out. “We had to either throw it away or turn it into cheese,” says Tim. “So for three months, we made cheese seven days a week, up from ve, thinking the world was ending and we weren’t going to need it.”
Now, with demand higher than ever, the decision seems prescient.
The increased production also o ered an opportunity to revive some experimentation in the dairy with some more batches of Poacher 50 – so-called because it was created by accident when a former cheesemaker su ered a lapse in concentration and heated one make to a higher-than-normal 50oC. The Poacher team le the resulting truckles in the maturation room for almost three years but when it impressed visiting buyers from Neal’s Yard Dairy, the cheese was o cially christened.
Given the uncertainty ahead of them in 2020, the team made this extra-matured cheese three days a week, so you can expect to see more of it in a few years’ time.
Although cheesemaking is back down to six days a week now, sales are up 30-40% year-on-year, so the Jones brothers are looking to recruit a fourth cheesemaker to return to pandemic production levels. It’s worth remembering that, as well as several di erent ages of Poacher, the farm also produces butter and another cheese called Lincolnshire Red.
Tim says that because Poacher is a small maker of hard, mature cheeses, he is not worried about a potential future drop in sales. “Our cheese is very forgiving, so we have time. We have months rather than weeks to be reactive if we need.”
Having one eye on the future is nothing new in the Jones family business. While many businesses loudly proclaim their environmental credentials with their branding and in the media, Lincolnshire Poacher has been quietly proving that action is more important.
The business is a net exporter of electricity thanks to the help of a 275kW wind turbine and 50kW solar set-up. A ground-source heat pump warms the o ce and packing room, and the vat is heated by a woodchip burner, utilising locally sourced wood.
The farm is kind to the soil, too, using no arti cial fertilisers, instead xing nitrogen with clover, and nourishing the soil with the cows’ natural fertiliser. The bu er feed that tops up the herd’s diet is also largely grown on-site.
Just as Lincolnshire Poacher quietly rose to the place it holds today in the British artisan cheese world, the company remains reticent about its position at the forefront of ‘green’ cheesemaking.
we have always stuck by getting the cheese to taste how we want it to taste, and then everything else takes care of itself.”
It is a slow and ongoing process. The e ect of changes in a make won’t be known until at least a year later and, when using the milk’s natural ora as the primary starter, “you have a moving target all the time,” says Tim, adding: “You just get better at controlling it, and we’re de nitely getting more consistent.”
If to err is human, then the path to consistency must lie in technology. The Lincolnshire Poacher team has tested this with its latest sta member, a cheeseturning robot named Florence the Machine, and the move is bearing fruit.
A formerly arduous job – turning 18,000 20kg cheeses a month, amounting to 360 tonnes – is now done e ortlessly through the night, and the new addition is having some other unintended consequences too.
To accommodate Florence, the cheesemaker had to swap the trolleys that the truckles were aged on for wooden shelving imported from France. The timber helps regulate the humidity in the cheese store, and, because the new shelves ll the room to the ceiling, air ow is reduced. Before, cheeses on the top shelves dried faster than others, but that issue is now solved. “It is actually a much better cheese store now.”
The most consistent aspect of running the business has been the commercial side, though. At least it was until the beginning of 2020. “Our cheese sales have been so consistent for so long – for 10-12 years I can
track it very precisely – and now suddenly the numbers are all miles up on normal. We are just o -the-charts busy.”
The change in consumer behaviour brought on by COVID is behind the rise. “People are reassessing their lives, and cheese is a small part of that,” he says. “We’re eating a bit better and shopping a bit better in farm shops, markets or delis, and I think that has endured.”
When the pandemic rst struck, the outlook was not quite so good. Initially, the
