Introducing Bowland Blue: The Transformative Art of Affinage

What happens when a finished cheese isn’t quite finished yet?

Meet Bowland Blue, the latest cheese to emerge from our Cotswold Maturing Room and a wonderful example of the transformative art of affinage.

Goat’s milk blue cheeses are a rarity in British cheesemaking. We wanted to explore what could happen if we took a young British goat’s milk blue and allowed our cheesemongers to take its maturation in a different direction.

From Lancashire to the Cotswolds

Bowland Blue begins life in Lancashire, made with goat’s milk from a local herd farmed by the cheesemaker’s sister. The young goat’s milk blue is released to us at six weeks old, when it makes the journey south to our Cotswold Maturing Room.

At this stage, it is already a finished cheese in its own right. But when it arrives with us, another stage in its development begins.

Our team carefully matures the cheese, allowing its texture and flavour to evolve far beyond those of the cheese that first arrives through the door. It is this transformation that creates Bowland Blue.

What is affinage?

Affinage is the art of maturing cheese. An affineur takes a cheese made by a cheesemaker and carefully manages the conditions in which it matures, using time, temperature, humidity and regular assessment to influence how its flavour and texture develop.

It is far more than simply making a cheese older.

Small decisions made throughout maturation can change the direction a cheese takes, bringing forward different flavours, altering its texture and allowing characteristics to emerge that were barely present in the younger cheese.

At our Cotswold Maturing Room, we use these techniques to work with cheeses from some of Britain’s finest cheesemakers. Sometimes that means bringing a cheese to what we believe is its perfect point of ripeness. With Bowland Blue, we wanted to see how much further we could take that idea.

Creating Bowland Blue

When the young cheese first arrives with us, its texture is comparatively light. With further maturation, it becomes denser and more yielding, while the flavour gains depth and complexity.

Most strikingly, a distinctive treacle-like sweetness begins to emerge, sitting alongside the character of the blue and the qualities of the goat’s milk.

The result is sufficiently different from the cheese with which we began that we felt it deserved an identity of its own.

We named it Bowland Blue, after the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire, a nod to the landscape in which its story begins.

What to drink with Bowland Blue

That balance of blue character and treacle-like sweetness makes Bowland Blue particularly good with a glass of off-dry Chenin Blanc. Look for something such as a Vouvray, where fresh acidity keeps pace with the richness of the cheese while notes of ripe orchard fruit, quince and honey complement its sweeter, more complex flavours.

It is a gentler pairing than the traditional blue cheese and Port combination, allowing the character of the goat’s milk and the work of the affinage to remain centre stage.

For us, Bowland Blue demonstrates something particularly exciting about affinage. Cheesemaking may finish when a cheese leaves the dairy, but its story doesn’t necessarily end there. In the hands of a skilled affineur, maturation can become another act of creation.

Discover Bowland Blue and taste the transformation for yourself.