Despite the success to date of The Craigmyle Cheese Company, the development process wasn't entirely glitch-free. Liz Marchant recalls a day when one of their batches of cheese just wouldn't firm up. "We tried all sorts of things but it just kept on sloshing around like cream. Then someone pointed out that we probably hadn't put our starter culture in."

For anyone who knows anything about cheese, leaving out your starter culture is a bit like leaving the ball out of a World Cup football match.

Nevertheless, Liz and Neil can now claim to be among Scotland's best cheesemakers. It all started when research found there was a gap in the market for a soft Scottish cheese. They spent the next two years creating a business plan, going on cheesemaking courses and working in cheese dairies in Scotland to get a feel for what was ahead.

With the essential knowledge behind them, a company logo was created and the name of the first cheese was decided, inspired by the locality (Wummle is an old term in the local dialect meaning 'to turn', and Clachnaben and Morven, both of which were developed later, are names of local hills).

Liz's experience in PR came in handy as they touted the product to the many contacts they made during their two years of research.

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