9 ms·

Cheddar empire: Rise of a cheese superpower

48 points by vo2maxer 6y ago

ReactiveJelly 6y ago
"As many look for dairy alternatives for ethical or health reasons, vegan cheeses have been on the rise." And that's all they say about that. Nothing about animal rights, animal welfare, or government dairy subsidies. Legend has it that at one point the US government was paying 75% of the price of dairy. I'm not sure how it is in the UK, but if you took that out here, vegan soymilk and dairy milk would cost the same. That bugs me. It's a free market except for isolationism, cronyism, and the need for "small farmers" to act as PR fronts. Occasionally there is a good regulation that does something useful.
- desas 6y ago
  Under EU rules (the CAP, which uses a large part of the EU budget) basically every farm whether dairy or crop is subsidised. For many dairy farms in upland regions, crop farming isn't economically viable due to the terrain, so cows and sheep are farmed instead. Even then many farms are only viable due to the subsidies.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    New Zealand farmers (who produce a lot of milk) have struggled with the level of subsidy the US and EU provide. Im a New Zealander and it used to be a thing I’d read about and feel frustrated. However dairy farming trashes your land and waterways. Selling milk and milk powder is about the dumbest use of the land we could have come up with and it had caused massive harm.
  - toyg 6y ago
    The CAP is not just subsidies, it's regulation too - even under its arrangements, because of modern efficiency there is simply too much milk being produced at the European level. In some years, farmers are literally paid to throw it away. This is because Europeans believe our agricultural peculiarities are worth protecting from the disruption of unbridled economic influences. Countries like France, Spain, or Italy, protect their milk so they can protect their cheese, so they can protect their recipes, so they can protect their food culture (and revenues) at large - a differentiator in the long term.
    - dmurray 6y ago
      It's also a strategic play: if you're dependent on imports for your food, some foreign power has a lot of leverage over you in a trade war or worse, an actual war. So you spend money to keep production at home even though it might be more economically efficient to abandon those farms and import more of your food. Some of the EU's subsidies go to "agricultural peculiarities" or small producers of niche traditional foods. That's fine, you're still propping up demand for the raw materials - that milk is just as good as any other if it comes to a crisis.
- Spivak 6y ago
  I think the argument goes that if you want dairy products to be available to everyone, and that the gov’t has a public health interest in that goal, then there has some minimum level of guaranteed demand or else dairy producers would collapse because they can’t really scale their production lock step with demand so the gov’t steps in to buy the excess and maybe finds a use for it. So this is either a necessary evil to correct a weird market or insane gov’t subsidy depending on your perspective.
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    Dairy was a regional economic engine. Production in my neck of the woods (upstate ny) provided jobs in agriculture, processing and trucking, along with the downstream industries. When laws changed and made the market national, huge producers were able to takeover the market and are in the process of putting everyone out of business. Yogurt in Trader Joe’s is shipped in from LA. Consumer prices haven’t dropped. As big producers vertically integrate, prices are going up for many commodities.
    - Stratoscope 6y ago
      > Yogurt in Trader Joe’s is shipped in from LA. And Eugene, Oregon. TJ's French Village plain nonfat yogurt is Nancy's Yogurt from Springfield Creamery in Eugene (formerly in Springfield), run by the Kesey family. https://nancysyogurt.com/our-creamery/ https://nancysyogurt.com/our-creamery/
      - Spooky23 6y ago
        Both seem absurd 3,000+ away. As does the cup of Chobani I had at a hotel in Texas!
- monadic2 6y ago
  What is vegan cheese? Have folks reproduced milk proteins in the lab, or is it taste-and-texture replication?
  - mikequinlan 6y ago
    Taste and texture 'similarity' using mostly nuts.
    - copperx 6y ago
      And lots of fat, often more than cheese.
      - twic 6y ago
        And not a lot of similarity.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      Why’s everything always nuts in vegan food? Surely there’s more options out there than nuts nuts nuts.
      - klyrs 6y ago
        They're a really good source of protein, which is otherwise pretty scarce in fruit & veg. As cheese and milk are more or less defined by their proteins, nuts and legumes are pretty much the only viable alternatives. I personally can't stand the stuff. The main selling point seems to be "it melts like cheese" but in my experience, it takes on a snotty texture. It'd probably help if I was a real vegan and didn't have alternatives...
  - bobbyi_settv 6y ago
    It's typically made from seeds or nuts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegan_cheese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegan_cheese So it's taste-and-texture replication. I don't even think it is aiming to perfectly replicate dairy cheese, as much as to be something that can be reasonably substituted for dairy cheese in the typical cases where it is used. It's analogous to how soy milk isn't meant to be indistinguishable from dairy milk but instead to be usable in place of dairy milk in coffee, cereal, etc.
- easytiger 6y ago
  Vegan cheese is absolutely and totally vile
PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
Side note: one of the saddest-but-also-good aspects of the rise of artisanal cheese making in the US is how most US producers seem to be pricing their product at or above the cost of European imports. You'd sort of expect them to aim a bit below, but it seems they've decided to go for maximum revenue from a smaller market. There is a some crazy good US cheese being made these days, easily as good as anything from Europe, but it costs a fortune, without any import taxes or ocean-crossing transportation fees.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I'd just add that, in the case of Cheddar specifically, some of the artisanal long-aged US Cheddars are essentially different cheeses from day-to-day Cabot or whatever or even really somewhat upscale cheddars that I typically see from Europe. The typical cheddars you can get in a supermarket are fine. But more expensive variants are at pretty much a different level.
  - deeg 6y ago
    Cabot Clothbound Cheddar is a pretty good compromise. It's close to English-style Cheddars and not quite as expensive as other artisanal US Cheddars. A great snacking cheese!
    - zhynn 6y ago
      Big thumbs up to everything from Jasper Hill Farms. If you ever get a chance to try the Winnimere, it's... really something.
- nimbius 6y ago
  im glad the US has finally started making a competitive artisan cheese. For a long time cheese in the US was an exercise in economics. As farms turned into factories around 1918, byproducts started to gain a frustratingly legitimate foothold in US grocery stores. Velveeta is an example of how capitalism can push a good or service off a cliff. by 1960 most US cheese was mostly filler and byproducts. processed yellow dairy slices had displaced nearly everything on the shelf, and anything that wanted to compete had to focus on volume, not quality. yancys in new york makes a very serviceable sharp cheddar, while Tillamook consistently turns out very good smoked cheddars. their 2010 masters reserve is heavenly.
29athrowaway 6y ago
For DIY sandwiches, salads, etc., crème fraîche is nicer than cheddar.
- matthewowen 6y ago
  This is such a strange opinion that I'm wondering if you're confused about what cheddar is or about what creme fraiche is.
  - 29athrowaway 6y ago
    IQ tests have questions where you are presented with a phrase and are challenged to find the associations between the different phrase elements that are either present or missing. When you are unable to infer the correct associations, your score is lower. This leads me to suspect you must have a really low IQ. There you have your well-deserved snarky retort to your snarky comment.
- tomjakubowski 6y ago
  This is like suggesting a muffin as an alternative to a wheat tortilla.
  - 29athrowaway 6y ago
    It's more like suggesting mustard as an alternative to ketchup, in the context of a culture where ketchup is a more commonly used condiment.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  Additionally for DIY sandwiches, banana and avocado is nicer than crème fraîche, but peanut butter and toothpaste is meaner than crème fraîche.
  - 29athrowaway 6y ago
    Perhaps you should write an article about eating toothpaste and submit it to HN. Try to taste as many brands as possible. When you eat toothpaste, does more fluoride make it taste better?
velox_io 6y ago
I grew up near Cheddar, If you were expecting an Empire of Cheese it's surprisingly modest. I recommend Wookey Hole and the area is a good place for bike rides (just not on the weekend). I seriously recommend Thatchers Gold [cider], that's probably Somerset's best export (and the Wurzels if you like cliches, only builders and farmers actually sound like that). I thought cheddar took off because it's easy to transport and store).[/success kid] PS: Cheddar is definitely nicer than creme fraiche (unless you enjoy soggy sandwiches, and a salad... no, just no). ;)
- dan-robertson 6y ago
  It is fortunate there was no AOC-like regulation requiring all cheddar to be aged in cheddar caves
- emmelaich 6y ago
  Wookey hole doesn't compare to many other caves really. It's a bit hokey. That said, there are caves that you can explore with speleologists. Also, Cheddar gorge itself is really short. The geography is interesting though. Water from mendips result in a perpetual spring in the middle of Wells. (hence the name) And the spring in Glastonbury Tor. Probably. PS. Area is great for good cheap cider aka scrumpy.
  - onion2k 6y ago
    Dorset is better for cider. Source: I grew up in Dorset and was a teenager.
alkonaut 6y ago
Was surprised to see in England that “cheddar(s)” us almost synonymous with “cheese”, to the point where it could be the sign hanging over the cheese section in a grocery store. Is this similar to how “pudding” is used for “dessert”, or is it simply that almost all the cheese will be cheddar anyway?
- pledg 6y ago
  Where in England was this, as none of the places I've lived do this. Signs would be Cheese or more broadly Dairy. Not that we don't have a lot of cheddar..
  - alkonaut 6y ago
    This was in several places including West Midlands but also other places in Britain such as Glasgow. Can’t remember which stores had ”Cheddars” over (all) the cheese, but might have been Marks & Spencer’s. This was 20 years ago, so has likely changed since.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      I mean that just doesn't like something that Marks and Spencers (of all places!) would do. They sell cheese from named small farms and things and have done for the last 20 years at least.
      - alkonaut 6y ago
        Yes, again I’m not sure. Could have been Sainsbury’s or Tesco - I’m more trying to remember the colors of the signs and the shops I used to visit than anything else.
- evgen 6y ago
  To be honest I think that this is a bit of hyperbole. Cheddar is certainly common, and as a simple example there will be at least three and usually four or five different varieties of house-brand cheddar (excluding different packaging and block vs. pre-grated) in any big market but there will be as much pan-European cheeses as well as other English cheese on display. This is London, so take it with an appropriate grain of salt for being both metropolitan and cosmopolitan, but no one I know of uses 'cheddar' to mean cheese in general or at least not in the same way someone from the southern US might refer to Coke as a generic for soda.
peteretep 6y ago
> Protected Designation of Origin PDO and A(d')OC are such a scam. Cheddar refers to a style of cheese, Champagne refers to a style of wine. Bah humbug.
angry_octet 6y ago
The strange part of this article is that it seems the author hasn't tasted any good English cheddar? Most of the cheese sold as cheddar bears absolutely no resemblance to cheddar, generally being flexible and springy with hardly more taste than the polyethylene wrapper.
- dan-robertson 6y ago
  In the postwar period this nearly became the case for all cheese in the U.K. It seemed the country was moving towards having a few varieties of highly processed, bland cheese (predominantly “cheddar”). I suppose non-bland cheeses were either to be thought of as unmodern or imported from France. Somehow a few farmhouse cheeses continued to be made and eventually became more popular. I think it is only in relatively recent decades that the variety of available cheese has shot up. I’m not really sure why things happened this way. Maybe it was cheaper or an effect of rationing. Unlike the US, I don’t think the U.K. ever banned making cheese with raw milk so perhaps it was a trend in consumer habits rather than one encouraged by the government or industry.
  - angry_octet 6y ago
    Same terrible thing happened with bread. Makes me thing of the Goodies episode on industrial farming -- some pursuit of ultimate efficiency.
deeg 6y ago
A shameless plug but this seems a good place for it: I created a PWA to keep track of the cheeses I've tried. You can use it for free at www.cheesewiz.app (There are no ads; this is just a personal project.)
ggm 6y ago
Cheddar refers to a place, a specific process in some kinds of hard cheese making, and to a non protected kind of cheese. You would hope all Cheddar has been through the cheddaring process. Many hard cheeses go though other processes. Whilst I personally wish some kind of domain d'origine had applied, it is worth pointing out that stilton cannot actually be made in the village of stilton due to DOC rules: it's outside the area. Wensleydale is basically dead now, in the same sense. (I mention it because Wensleydale and red Leicester are both cheddared. I am unsure if traditional stilton is, but it has 'crumb' so it's very likely) The boat has sailed. Cheddar is like aspirin or thermos, it's a generic. The American national cheese reserve probably is cheddared? Is pretty unlike Cheddar as I know it. If it helps preserve a milk surplus, feeds people on food stamps and helps farms, it has a role. Cheddar gorge is lovely. They did paper making there due to water power.
- owenversteeg 6y ago
  Wait, what's the problem with Wensleydale? I've been eating it for a while now and I just looked it up on Wikipedia and it seems that as long as it's labeled Yorkshire Wensleydale you're getting the real stuff. Or am I eating a modern bastardization?
  - ggm 6y ago
    You're probably getting the real deal. Nobody else much is. the stuff in union-jack flagged plastic packs we get out here is pretty torrid, as is the red leicster, the 'golden delicious' of the cheese world. When I lived in York in the 1980s there was a cheese shop just outside the city walls on the south side near the fulford road which sold hand made/artisanal wensleydale, red and stilton, and blued varieties of the wenslydale and the red. they were fantastically good. The other thing you can't get for love nor money out here in OZ is a russet apple: you can't been wensleydale and a good crisp russet apple.
- onion2k 6y ago
  Cheddar gorge is lovely. They did paper making there due to water power. I went on a couple of school trips to Cheddar Gorge. It's a beautiful place. The highlight for me was Wookey Hole and the stories of the witch.
owenversteeg 6y ago
Very interesting article! I'd recommend actually reading it :) I'm a big cheddar fan and I had never heard of this: > Aged cheddar, like other hard, aged cheeses, is very low in lactose. Also, the snippet about cheddar growing in popularity due to its ease of transport (spoils slower due to less moisture content) is interesting.
meritganset 6y ago
As far as low quality HN submissions go, this is pretty low quality

48 points by vo2maxer 6y ago

"As many look for dairy alternatives for ethical or health reasons, vegan cheeses have been on the rise." And that's all they say about that. Nothing about animal rights, animal welfare, or government dairy subsidies. Legend has it that at one point the US government was paying 75% of the price of dairy. I'm not sure how it is in the UK, but if you took that out here, vegan soymilk and dairy milk would cost the same. That bugs me. It's a free market except for isolationism, cronyism, and the need for "small farmers" to act as PR fronts. Occasionally there is a good regulation that does something useful.

desas 6y ago
Under EU rules (the CAP, which uses a large part of the EU budget) basically every farm whether dairy or crop is subsidised. For many dairy farms in upland regions, crop farming isn't economically viable due to the terrain, so cows and sheep are farmed instead. Even then many farms are only viable due to the subsidies.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  New Zealand farmers (who produce a lot of milk) have struggled with the level of subsidy the US and EU provide. Im a New Zealander and it used to be a thing I’d read about and feel frustrated. However dairy farming trashes your land and waterways. Selling milk and milk powder is about the dumbest use of the land we could have come up with and it had caused massive harm.
- toyg 6y ago
  The CAP is not just subsidies, it's regulation too - even under its arrangements, because of modern efficiency there is simply too much milk being produced at the European level. In some years, farmers are literally paid to throw it away. This is because Europeans believe our agricultural peculiarities are worth protecting from the disruption of unbridled economic influences. Countries like France, Spain, or Italy, protect their milk so they can protect their cheese, so they can protect their recipes, so they can protect their food culture (and revenues) at large - a differentiator in the long term.
  - dmurray 6y ago
    It's also a strategic play: if you're dependent on imports for your food, some foreign power has a lot of leverage over you in a trade war or worse, an actual war. So you spend money to keep production at home even though it might be more economically efficient to abandon those farms and import more of your food. Some of the EU's subsidies go to "agricultural peculiarities" or small producers of niche traditional foods. That's fine, you're still propping up demand for the raw materials - that milk is just as good as any other if it comes to a crisis.
Spivak 6y ago
I think the argument goes that if you want dairy products to be available to everyone, and that the gov’t has a public health interest in that goal, then there has some minimum level of guaranteed demand or else dairy producers would collapse because they can’t really scale their production lock step with demand so the gov’t steps in to buy the excess and maybe finds a use for it. So this is either a necessary evil to correct a weird market or insane gov’t subsidy depending on your perspective.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  Dairy was a regional economic engine. Production in my neck of the woods (upstate ny) provided jobs in agriculture, processing and trucking, along with the downstream industries. When laws changed and made the market national, huge producers were able to takeover the market and are in the process of putting everyone out of business. Yogurt in Trader Joe’s is shipped in from LA. Consumer prices haven’t dropped. As big producers vertically integrate, prices are going up for many commodities.
  - Stratoscope 6y ago
    > Yogurt in Trader Joe’s is shipped in from LA. And Eugene, Oregon. TJ's French Village plain nonfat yogurt is Nancy's Yogurt from Springfield Creamery in Eugene (formerly in Springfield), run by the Kesey family. https://nancysyogurt.com/our-creamery/ https://nancysyogurt.com/our-creamery/
    - Spooky23 6y ago
      Both seem absurd 3,000+ away. As does the cup of Chobani I had at a hotel in Texas!
monadic2 6y ago
What is vegan cheese? Have folks reproduced milk proteins in the lab, or is it taste-and-texture replication?
- mikequinlan 6y ago
  Taste and texture 'similarity' using mostly nuts.
  - copperx 6y ago
    And lots of fat, often more than cheese.
    - twic 6y ago
      And not a lot of similarity.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    Why’s everything always nuts in vegan food? Surely there’s more options out there than nuts nuts nuts.
    - klyrs 6y ago
      They're a really good source of protein, which is otherwise pretty scarce in fruit & veg. As cheese and milk are more or less defined by their proteins, nuts and legumes are pretty much the only viable alternatives. I personally can't stand the stuff. The main selling point seems to be "it melts like cheese" but in my experience, it takes on a snotty texture. It'd probably help if I was a real vegan and didn't have alternatives...
- bobbyi_settv 6y ago
  It's typically made from seeds or nuts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegan_cheese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegan_cheese So it's taste-and-texture replication. I don't even think it is aiming to perfectly replicate dairy cheese, as much as to be something that can be reasonably substituted for dairy cheese in the typical cases where it is used. It's analogous to how soy milk isn't meant to be indistinguishable from dairy milk but instead to be usable in place of dairy milk in coffee, cereal, etc.
easytiger 6y ago
Vegan cheese is absolutely and totally vile

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

Side note: one of the saddest-but-also-good aspects of the rise of artisanal cheese making in the US is how most US producers seem to be pricing their product at or above the cost of European imports. You'd sort of expect them to aim a bit below, but it seems they've decided to go for maximum revenue from a smaller market. There is a some crazy good US cheese being made these days, easily as good as anything from Europe, but it costs a fortune, without any import taxes or ocean-crossing transportation fees.

ghaff 6y ago
I'd just add that, in the case of Cheddar specifically, some of the artisanal long-aged US Cheddars are essentially different cheeses from day-to-day Cabot or whatever or even really somewhat upscale cheddars that I typically see from Europe. The typical cheddars you can get in a supermarket are fine. But more expensive variants are at pretty much a different level.
- deeg 6y ago
  Cabot Clothbound Cheddar is a pretty good compromise. It's close to English-style Cheddars and not quite as expensive as other artisanal US Cheddars. A great snacking cheese!
  - zhynn 6y ago
    Big thumbs up to everything from Jasper Hill Farms. If you ever get a chance to try the Winnimere, it's... really something.
nimbius 6y ago
im glad the US has finally started making a competitive artisan cheese. For a long time cheese in the US was an exercise in economics. As farms turned into factories around 1918, byproducts started to gain a frustratingly legitimate foothold in US grocery stores. Velveeta is an example of how capitalism can push a good or service off a cliff. by 1960 most US cheese was mostly filler and byproducts. processed yellow dairy slices had displaced nearly everything on the shelf, and anything that wanted to compete had to focus on volume, not quality. yancys in new york makes a very serviceable sharp cheddar, while Tillamook consistently turns out very good smoked cheddars. their 2010 masters reserve is heavenly.

29athrowaway 6y ago

For DIY sandwiches, salads, etc., crème fraîche is nicer than cheddar.

matthewowen 6y ago
This is such a strange opinion that I'm wondering if you're confused about what cheddar is or about what creme fraiche is.
- 29athrowaway 6y ago
  IQ tests have questions where you are presented with a phrase and are challenged to find the associations between the different phrase elements that are either present or missing. When you are unable to infer the correct associations, your score is lower. This leads me to suspect you must have a really low IQ. There you have your well-deserved snarky retort to your snarky comment.
tomjakubowski 6y ago
This is like suggesting a muffin as an alternative to a wheat tortilla.
- 29athrowaway 6y ago
  It's more like suggesting mustard as an alternative to ketchup, in the context of a culture where ketchup is a more commonly used condiment.
DonHopkins 6y ago
Additionally for DIY sandwiches, banana and avocado is nicer than crème fraîche, but peanut butter and toothpaste is meaner than crème fraîche.
- 29athrowaway 6y ago
  Perhaps you should write an article about eating toothpaste and submit it to HN. Try to taste as many brands as possible. When you eat toothpaste, does more fluoride make it taste better?

velox_io 6y ago

I grew up near Cheddar, If you were expecting an Empire of Cheese it's surprisingly modest. I recommend Wookey Hole and the area is a good place for bike rides (just not on the weekend). I seriously recommend Thatchers Gold [cider], that's probably Somerset's best export (and the Wurzels if you like cliches, only builders and farmers actually sound like that). I thought cheddar took off because it's easy to transport and store).[/success kid] PS: Cheddar is definitely nicer than creme fraiche (unless you enjoy soggy sandwiches, and a salad... no, just no). ;)

dan-robertson 6y ago
It is fortunate there was no AOC-like regulation requiring all cheddar to be aged in cheddar caves
emmelaich 6y ago
Wookey hole doesn't compare to many other caves really. It's a bit hokey. That said, there are caves that you can explore with speleologists. Also, Cheddar gorge itself is really short. The geography is interesting though. Water from mendips result in a perpetual spring in the middle of Wells. (hence the name) And the spring in Glastonbury Tor. Probably. PS. Area is great for good cheap cider aka scrumpy.
- onion2k 6y ago
  Dorset is better for cider. Source: I grew up in Dorset and was a teenager.

alkonaut 6y ago

Was surprised to see in England that “cheddar(s)” us almost synonymous with “cheese”, to the point where it could be the sign hanging over the cheese section in a grocery store. Is this similar to how “pudding” is used for “dessert”, or is it simply that almost all the cheese will be cheddar anyway?

pledg 6y ago
Where in England was this, as none of the places I've lived do this. Signs would be Cheese or more broadly Dairy. Not that we don't have a lot of cheddar..
- alkonaut 6y ago
  This was in several places including West Midlands but also other places in Britain such as Glasgow. Can’t remember which stores had ”Cheddars” over (all) the cheese, but might have been Marks & Spencer’s. This was 20 years ago, so has likely changed since.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    I mean that just doesn't like something that Marks and Spencers (of all places!) would do. They sell cheese from named small farms and things and have done for the last 20 years at least.
    - alkonaut 6y ago
      Yes, again I’m not sure. Could have been Sainsbury’s or Tesco - I’m more trying to remember the colors of the signs and the shops I used to visit than anything else.
evgen 6y ago
To be honest I think that this is a bit of hyperbole. Cheddar is certainly common, and as a simple example there will be at least three and usually four or five different varieties of house-brand cheddar (excluding different packaging and block vs. pre-grated) in any big market but there will be as much pan-European cheeses as well as other English cheese on display. This is London, so take it with an appropriate grain of salt for being both metropolitan and cosmopolitan, but no one I know of uses 'cheddar' to mean cheese in general or at least not in the same way someone from the southern US might refer to Coke as a generic for soda.

peteretep 6y ago

> Protected Designation of Origin PDO and A(d')OC are such a scam. Cheddar refers to a style of cheese, Champagne refers to a style of wine. Bah humbug.

angry_octet 6y ago

The strange part of this article is that it seems the author hasn't tasted any good English cheddar? Most of the cheese sold as cheddar bears absolutely no resemblance to cheddar, generally being flexible and springy with hardly more taste than the polyethylene wrapper.

dan-robertson 6y ago
In the postwar period this nearly became the case for all cheese in the U.K. It seemed the country was moving towards having a few varieties of highly processed, bland cheese (predominantly “cheddar”). I suppose non-bland cheeses were either to be thought of as unmodern or imported from France. Somehow a few farmhouse cheeses continued to be made and eventually became more popular. I think it is only in relatively recent decades that the variety of available cheese has shot up. I’m not really sure why things happened this way. Maybe it was cheaper or an effect of rationing. Unlike the US, I don’t think the U.K. ever banned making cheese with raw milk so perhaps it was a trend in consumer habits rather than one encouraged by the government or industry.
- angry_octet 6y ago
  Same terrible thing happened with bread. Makes me thing of the Goodies episode on industrial farming -- some pursuit of ultimate efficiency.

deeg 6y ago

A shameless plug but this seems a good place for it: I created a PWA to keep track of the cheeses I've tried. You can use it for free at www.cheesewiz.app (There are no ads; this is just a personal project.)

ggm 6y ago

Cheddar refers to a place, a specific process in some kinds of hard cheese making, and to a non protected kind of cheese. You would hope all Cheddar has been through the cheddaring process. Many hard cheeses go though other processes. Whilst I personally wish some kind of domain d'origine had applied, it is worth pointing out that stilton cannot actually be made in the village of stilton due to DOC rules: it's outside the area. Wensleydale is basically dead now, in the same sense. (I mention it because Wensleydale and red Leicester are both cheddared. I am unsure if traditional stilton is, but it has 'crumb' so it's very likely) The boat has sailed. Cheddar is like aspirin or thermos, it's a generic. The American national cheese reserve probably is cheddared? Is pretty unlike Cheddar as I know it. If it helps preserve a milk surplus, feeds people on food stamps and helps farms, it has a role. Cheddar gorge is lovely. They did paper making there due to water power.

owenversteeg 6y ago
Wait, what's the problem with Wensleydale? I've been eating it for a while now and I just looked it up on Wikipedia and it seems that as long as it's labeled Yorkshire Wensleydale you're getting the real stuff. Or am I eating a modern bastardization?
- ggm 6y ago
  You're probably getting the real deal. Nobody else much is. the stuff in union-jack flagged plastic packs we get out here is pretty torrid, as is the red leicster, the 'golden delicious' of the cheese world. When I lived in York in the 1980s there was a cheese shop just outside the city walls on the south side near the fulford road which sold hand made/artisanal wensleydale, red and stilton, and blued varieties of the wenslydale and the red. they were fantastically good. The other thing you can't get for love nor money out here in OZ is a russet apple: you can't been wensleydale and a good crisp russet apple.
onion2k 6y ago
Cheddar gorge is lovely. They did paper making there due to water power. I went on a couple of school trips to Cheddar Gorge. It's a beautiful place. The highlight for me was Wookey Hole and the stories of the witch.

owenversteeg 6y ago

Very interesting article! I'd recommend actually reading it :) I'm a big cheddar fan and I had never heard of this: > Aged cheddar, like other hard, aged cheeses, is very low in lactose. Also, the snippet about cheddar growing in popularity due to its ease of transport (spoils slower due to less moisture content) is interesting.

meritganset 6y ago

As far as low quality HN submissions go, this is pretty low quality