The Cheese Knowledge Tour launched in April as a “practical toolkit for modern food businesses” across the UK and Ireland.
Designed for farm shops, delis, independent retailers, hospitality teams and buyers, its free courses focus on building the knowledge and confidence needed to work with cheese commercially.
Funded by a group of independent producers, it has been developed at a time when businesses are under increasing pressure and where the cost of properly training staff has become difficult to justify.
We spoke to tour founder & programme director Tanny Gill, whose cheese journey started over two decades ago on the Isle of Mull.
What’s the purpose of The Cheese Knowledge Tour? It’s empowering grassroots-level people in the industry who are selling cheese every day, building their confidence, increasing their knowledge about cheese and making them as comfortable as they can be.
It means everybody benefits. The consumer has a great experience, the businesses sell more cheese, producers sell more cheese, and we have a wider, healthier, a more knowledgeable cheese community in Britain.
Why is the tour so important? Cheese is still a relatively very modern culture for us in Britain and a lot of our cheese prejudices are based on European lifestyles and European produce, so we tend to misunderstand British provenance, the British history of eating food and British cheeses. The tour is about telling these stories so that we have a stronger, more confident community understanding of British produce.
“We tend to misunderstand British provenance and history”
What barriers face people who want to work with cheese? One is accessing the opportunities to get into the industry. But once you into the industry, how do you progress? The tour is helping people at the grassroots level to see the opportunities and possibilities in the trade. They can then pursue other certified courses, like the Academy of Cheese courses, and enhance a much more defined career path.
What’s the best cheese? It all depends on what you like and the emotions attached to it. For me, I am going to talk about Isle of Mull cheddar. I am going to talk about the west coast of Scotland with its rain, peatiness and hardiness, because I’ve spent time there. Equally, there is a lovely cheese from the Alps, but I have not been on the Alps, so I can only read and I can imagine the story. What I can say is that British cheesemakers are right up there.
What’s a good gateway for people who are wary of blue cheese? Something soft, buttery, delicate and not spicy on the palate. A young stilton would be perfectly fine to start with and, from a Scottish point of view, young Strathdon Blue made in Tain, which is almost as high up north as you can go. Or Cashel Blue from Ireland. These are all easy, delicate eating blues, but one of the nicest blues you can also eat is a goats milk blue called Biggar Blue. Because it’s young, you don’t get the goatiness in it.
What’s the ideal cheese and alcohol pairing? Ardbeg 10, a peaty whisky from the west coast of Scotland, paired with Isle of Mull cheddar. A basic rule of thumb is “what grows together goes together”. From a blue point of view, something that is really nice is Clawson Farms 1912 Summer Milk Stilton with a chilled, sauternes wine: absolutely delicious!
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