Amateur cheesemaker here - I know there are both other amateurs and commercial producers I've met on HN over years, so I'd be curious to hear your input here to

Amateur cheesemaker here - I know there are both other amateurs and commercial producers I've met on HN over years, so I'd be curious to hear your input here too - to my thinking, while there are differences in working with raw vs. pasteurized milk, I also agree this seems overstated. Stilton is stilton. What seems more likely is there was a cheese similar to Stilton that was formerly produced with raw milk, and chances are too that it depended on the local bacteria present wherever it was made, even down to the level of what those particular cows (or goats, or sheep, etc...) were eating. Without those conditions, it is similar, but never the same. This is to my thinking the dirty secret of cheese... there are commercial varieties produced in enormous numbers that are consistent because they are done to scale in factory conditions. But, historically, a big part of the reason for so many variations and differences had more to do with conditions we can't created today because they would be considered unhygenic or unsanitary. It's also a reality that there really are only so many variations and many types that have distinct geographic names are substantially the same cheese.