Sponsoring ‘The Affineur of The Year’
As a regular reader you will already know that the Cheese Market team run the market as volunteers and the profits are donated to charity or ploughed back into the Artisan Cheese Industry – well, what you might not know is that one of the events we sponsor is ‘The Affineur of The Year’.
‘Affinage’ is the French term for maturing and looking after cheese once it’s been made. This may include washing the rind with alcohol, it might be moving it from one temperature storage to another – lower to slow the maturation, higher to bring it on, or change the humidity to help the cheese mature differently.
It is a real science, and many traditional recipes have very set maturing patterns, but sometimes it is open to experimentation and the results can, occasionally, be utterly amazing!
In the UK we have a competition each year offering four different cheeses for competitors to mature in their own way. The Cheese Market sponsors the Cheddar maturing competition and each of the competitors received their 2 week-old, Quickes Cheddar a whole year ago. On the 12th of this month the cheeses will be judged by some pretty auspicious judges, and we will be there lapping up the atmosphere of this extraordinary cheese event.
Quickes kept one of the exact same batch aside and matured it in their own ‘caves’ – this acts as a ‘control’, but the competitors are allowed to do anything they like with their cheeses.
Some will stay traditional, but some like Andy from the Courtyard Dairy in Yorkshire has been doing something very different indeed with his cheese this year.
Hold on a moment, I’m just going to set the scene here by telling you about Drunk Cheese. We all know lovely Max from @drunk_cheese who brings an assortment of differently macerated cheeses to our market each month (gin lovers try the ‘Blugin’ it’ll blow your mind) and the history of this style of cheese is fascinating.
It started in Italy during the first World War. Local cheesemakers hid their cheese from the greedy eyes of the Austro-Hungarian soldiers by tucking them under the pomace (the skins of the grapes left in the barrel after winemaking).
The barrels were obviously empty of wine at that point so of no interest to the soldiers and the cheeses remained hidden beneath the old skins. Of course, this made a very big difference to the flavour and texture of the cheese once it was released from its hidey-hole and so the art of ‘Drunk Cheese’ began. It’s not a gimmick it has its feet firmly underground in the world of real Artisan cheese – who knew?
So, where was I? ah yes, our Cheddar competition – well, Andy at the Courtyard Dairy has decided that he will give his Cheddar a bit of the same treatment, but instead of using grapes which are not local to him he is using the leftover apple skins from his neighbouring cider makers.
I for one cannot wait to try this and guess what – so can you! We are hoping to bring a large chunk of Andy’s cheese and other entries back from the competition, so that you can decide which you think was the best. Be your own judge and see what affinage is about!
See you at Market HQ on Sunday for this exciting tasting.
If you want to be part of this wondrous cheesy event then tickets are available