A cheesy tour of Europe
The atmospheric town of Richmond in Swaledale is one of the main towns in cheese making country.
PHOTO CREDIT: Andrew Marshall.
Cheese,
glorious cheese Andrew Marshall takes us on a cheesy tour around Europe’s best regions for this dairy delight. Gastro-tourism is big business now. It seems many of us are no longer just satisfied with visiting well-worn cities and sites, and we’re taking the requisite Instagram photos to prove it. Now we want something else from our journeys, an authentic experience that isn’t just about seeing, but smelling and touching and tasting too. The cornerstone of this epicurean exploration movement is the lure of discovering delicacies at their source. Perhaps no other food lends itself to such consideration—and adoration—as cheese. From gargantuan wheels of Parmesan to chunks of rustic Wensleydale to creamy, oozy Camembert, tracking cheese’s journey from paddock to plate transports the traveler to bucolic country idylls and through centuries of tradition and practice. It also provides ample opportunity to sample the wares! by Andrew Marshall
ENGLAND – The Yorkshire Dales The Yorkshire Dales is a region of time less beauty symbolized by limestone walls that climb its brooding hills, endlessly varying patterns of grey against green marching up impossibly steep slopes until they disappear into the heather-cloaked moorland on the summits. It played a starring role in the drama of the 2014 Tour de France, but there’s so much more to the area than cycleways and scenery. For centuries people have been churning cheeses here; it’s thought that the origins
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of local cheese making lie with Cistercian monks who arrived from Normandy and settled in the local abbeys in the 11th century. They passed on their techniques to the farmers of Swaledale and Wensleydale and a local industry was born. Despite the steady decline in bespoke cheese making during the 20th century, there’s been a resurgence of interest in local handcrafted cheese around here in recent years.
The cornerstone of this epicurean exploration movement is the lure of discovering delicacies at their source. Perhaps no other food lends itself to such consideration—and adoration—as cheese.
Andy Swinscoe cuts some cheese inside The Courtyard Dairy in Settle. Photo Credit: Kate Moseley
A fine example is The Swaledale Cheese Company perched high above the attractive market town of Richmond. The signature Swaledale cheese was originally made with the milk of Swaledale sheep or goats
