'Twas Poacher's Delight Every Saturday Night

 

“‘Twas Poachers delight every Saturday night to feast on what he pleased.

With cunning and guile, this gentleman of style went out for his pound of cheese…”

—Lincolnshire folksong

The strangest thing about cheddar-style cheese Lincolnshire Poacher is the land from which it derives.  To the east is the ocean; to the west, the fens, a flat beige-and-brown patchwork quilt of rapeseed and flax, wheat and cattle beans.  It ain’t exactly Somerset, but Tim and Simon Jones, the fourth generation of farmers cultivating Ulceby Grange (on fields a bit lusher and hillier than fenland), took over their father’s dairy herd, and, thirteen years ago, decided to make cheese with the milk.

So, why cheddar?  There was no traditional Lincolnshire cheese to resurrect, and cheddar, according to Simon, “is a rugged cheese, withstands knocks well, and makes good for everyday eating.”  Because he isn’t cheesemaking in Somerset, traditional cheddar country, Simon can’t call his product “cheddar” despite the old-fashioned recipe he uses (just as Champagne-style wines not from the French region of Champagne are barred from dubbing themselves Champagne).  On the flip side, this embargo leaves the Joneses free to refute cheddar-making conventions like cloth-binding, and they choose instead to wipe their wheels with wet Plasticote, which, once dry, forms a more hermetic seal than cloth and allows the cheeses to mature more slowly and for longer (two years for the Neal’s Yard wheels compared with fifteen months for the cheeses they sell on British farmer’s markets).  Before I learned that the name of the cheese came from a local folksong, I actually thought it alluded to the brothers ‘poaching’ cheddar from Somerset!  Then again, the Joneses have elected to retain some of the conditions required of traditional West Country cheddar-makers, like milking cows from their own herd, keeping the milk raw, and using traditional rennet, not because they have to but because they believe it makes the cheese taste better. 

The Joneses’ farmland has undergone an organics conversion but the cows won’t begin theirs until January, so the cheese won’t technically be classified organic until over two years from now.  Nevertheless, the clover eaten by the cows is organic and Simon looks after them so carefully, most nights getting out of bed for a 3 a.m. inspection of the herd, that he can identify them all by name.  He reckons the cheese has improved since the farm went organic, even if the cows aren’t yet certified.  “To me,” says Simon Jones, “our cheese represents the culmination of everything on this farm, and if we’re not doing everything right, the cheese won’t taste good.” 

The man’s got a point, actually.  Cheese is the pressed and matured essence of a dairy farm: its sun and its rain, its cows, its land and people all rolled into one.  And it won’t lie; shortcuts show in the flavor.  But cheese doesn’t necessarily have to be long-established to be lovely and true, as Lincolnshire Poacher proves.  Here’s to tradition—old and new!

On sight, Poacher comes in convex 20 kg Plasti-coted wheels stamped on top with their production date.  The mottling left by the moulds is the colour of leopard-print and the Plasti-cote makes the outside of the cheese hard, impregnable and rough.  The inside of the cheese is a pale blond yellow and smoothly textured.  The smell of the mould that spends two years growing on the outside of the Plasti-cote as the cheese matures so overwhelms the cheese room with mustiness that I had a hard time concentrating on the taste!  But the cheeses are scrubbed before the Joneses send them out, so by the time the wheels arrive in London, only the vestiges of mustiness remain on the outside.  The inside of the cheese smells lactic and sweet.  This cheese didn’t become one of my favorites until about May, when it started constantly tasting fantastic; a ricocheting effect in the mouth of milky, sweet and succulently fruity flavors, with a quick punch at the end.  I love its texture, too: dense and creamy without tasting oversoft or fatty.  Simon abstractly likens Poacher to “thick chocolate.”