Paxton’s Exclusives: Five Cheeses From Our Maturing Rooms and What to Drink With Them

A great cheese is not always finished when it leaves the cheesemaker.

For some of the cheeses at Paxton & Whitfield, the next part of their story happens in our own maturing rooms. Our cheese care team watches how each batch develops, deciding when a cheese needs more time, when its texture is changing in the right direction and, ultimately, when it is ready for our counters.

In other cases, our role is one of selection. We work closely with cheesemakers to choose particular batches that deliver the flavour, texture and character we are looking for. Montgomery’s Cheddar is a perfect example. The cheese is made and matured on the farm, but individual batches are selected for Paxton & Whitfield.

Together, these cheeses give a particularly good taste of what happens behind the scenes at Paxton’s.

For our Paxton’s Exclusives Virtual Tasting, Jazz Reeves, who oversees our cheese care and maturation, has selected five cheeses that tell that story particularly well. She has also chosen an alcoholic and non-alcoholic pairing for each, giving you a few different ways to explore their flavours.

As ever, these are recommendations rather than rules. Taste, experiment and see what works for you.

Greystones

For many joining this tasting, Greystones will be a first taste of a cheese that has not yet joined the Paxton & Whitfield range.

It is a particularly good example of the role maturation can play after a cheese leaves the dairy. Rather than simply receiving a finished cheese and sending it straight to our counters, our cheese care team continues its development in the maturing rooms, watching how the texture and flavour evolve and deciding when it has reached the profile we are looking for.

Guests at this tasting will be among the first to try it, guided by Jazz as she explains what the team has been looking for as the cheese develops.

Alcoholic pairing: Sancerre

Sancerre brings freshness and acidity, giving a lively contrast to the more developed flavours of the cheese without overwhelming them.

Non-alcoholic pairing: Fruity sparkling tea or kombucha

A fruity sparkling tea or kombucha brings acidity, fruit and gentle fizz, making it a refreshing partner without adding too much sweetness.

Paxton & Whitfield Triple Cream

Our Triple Cream is produced exclusively for Paxton & Whitfield. Extra Cornish cream is added during production, creating the rich, buttery texture that defines the style.

It is perhaps the most immediately indulgent cheese in the line-up. The richness is the point, but that also makes the choice of drink particularly interesting. A good pairing should refresh the palate rather than trying to compete with all that cream.

Alcoholic pairing: English sparkling wine

Bubbles and acidity are wonderfully useful alongside a rich soft cheese. English sparkling wine brings both, cutting through the buttery texture and leaving the palate refreshed for another bite.

There is also something rather pleasing about pairing an English cheese made with Cornish cream with a bottle of English fizz.

Non-alcoholic pairing: Elderflower presse

Elderflower presse gives us freshness, fizz and a gentle floral sweetness. It is light enough not to overwhelm the cheese but has enough aromatic character to make the combination feel like a proper pairing rather than simply a soft drink on the side.

Sparkenhoe Red Leicester XO

Our XO Red Leicester shows what additional maturation can do to a cheese we already know well.

Sparkenhoe Red Leicester normally reaches us much younger. For the XO, selected cheeses continue maturing with our team to around 12 months. The additional time gives the cheese a brittle, dense texture and a deeper balance of savoury and sweet flavours.

It is recognisably Red Leicester, but with considerably more depth.

Alcoholic pairing: Oloroso Sherry

Oloroso has the weight to stand alongside an older cheese, with nutty, savoury and gently oxidative flavours that sit naturally with the deeper character of the Red Leicester.

The cheese has sweetness as well as savoury depth, so the pairing has plenty of places to meet without either side disappearing.

Non-alcoholic pairing: London Fog

Perhaps the least conventional pairing of the five.

A London Fog combines Earl Grey with warm milk and vanilla. The milk echoes some of the cheese’s creamy, caramelised character, while bergamot and tea bring fragrance and a little tannin.

It sounds unusual on paper. That is exactly why we think it is worth trying.

Montgomery’s Cheddar

Montgomery’s is slightly different from some of the other cheeses in this tasting.

We are not taking a young cheese and transforming it through further maturation ourselves. Instead, Paxton & Whitfield selects particular batches of Montgomery’s Cheddar for the flavour and character we are looking for.

Selection is every bit as important a cheesemongering skill as maturation. Cheeses made by the same dairy can develop differently, and knowing which batches offer the profile we want for Paxton’s is an important part of the job.

Alcoholic pairing: West Country cider

There are some regional pairings that have endured for good reason.

A traditional West Country cider brings ripe apple, freshness and enough structure to stand up to a full-flavoured Cheddar. The fruit sits particularly well alongside the nuttier, savoury notes of Montgomery’s.

Non-alcoholic pairing: Cloudy apple juice

Cloudy apple juice follows the same logic. Sweetness and acidity make it a natural partner for Cheddar, while the ripe apple flavour works beautifully with the richness of the cheese.

Choose a good-quality juice with plenty of fresh apple character rather than anything overly sweet.

Bowland Blue

Bowland Blue is perhaps the clearest example in this tasting of how maturation can transform a cheese.

It begins life in Lancashire as a young goat’s milk blue before coming to Paxton & Whitfield, where our team continues its maturation. As it develops, the texture becomes denser and more yielding and the flavour gains considerably more depth, including a distinctive sweetness alongside the blue.

The result became sufficiently different from the cheese that originally entered our maturing room that we gave it a name of its own.

Alcoholic pairing: Traditional mead

That sweetness gives us an interesting route into the pairing.

Traditional mead brings honeyed sweetness that can soften the salt and blue character of the cheese while having enough richness of its own to avoid being overwhelmed.

Blue cheese and sweetness is an old partnership. Mead simply takes it in a slightly different direction.

Non-alcoholic pairing: Ginger beer

Ginger beer brings sweetness too, but adds heat, spice and plenty of freshness.

Those sharper flavours provide a lively counterpoint to the richness of Bowland Blue, while the sweetness helps soften the more assertive elements of the blueing.

A taste of the maturing room

These five cheeses are very different, but they are connected by the role our cheesemongers play in shaping the Paxton’s range.

Sometimes that means selecting a particular batch. Sometimes it means allowing a cheese more time. And sometimes, as with Bowland Blue, the work of maturation takes a cheese somewhere quite different from where it began.

The same applies to the drinks alongside them. There is no single correct pairing. A glass of Sancerre may reveal something different in Greystones, Oloroso might bring the nuttier character of Red Leicester XO to the fore, while ginger beer can completely change the way you experience a blue.

These pairings are simply starting points rather than rules. Experiment, taste and discover what works for you.