Out & About Winter 2019

They also make kefir, which is a fermented milk drink that is very good at getting healthy live bacteria into the gut. It originated in the Caucasus Mountains and is very popular in Eastern Europe and Russia. The farm itself has been organic since 2001 and in 2019 Nettlebed Creamery won the award from Lux for Best Organic Producer. Rose explains: “We are really proud of being organic – for the cows, their health and the countryside itself. “We are environmentally friendly, with solar panels on the barn, all the heating is powered by a woodchip boiler and the whey goes to a bio digester to create methane to create energy. “What I would love to do is capture some benefit of the whey. It’s a by-product which is easy to ignore, but there are exciting things you can do with it, like make vodka or gin. The whey is a problem which needs sorting. Maybe we should start a gin distillery.” At present Nettlebed has 180 cows in milk. They are a mixed- breed herd made up primarily of Swedish Reds, Holstein Friesians and Montbeliarde. “It’s fantastic to have this breeding programme as it makes for healthy, robust cows, which is important for an organic farm. Happier cows use less antibiotics and have less vet visits. A happy herd of mixed breeds,” Rose says. The future has big things in store for Nettlebed – in October Bix and Highmoor were added to the Waitrose No. 1 Range to be stocked nationwide. If you miss them at Waitrose, all Nettlebed cheeses are also available at Cheese Etc., Pangbourne, and over Christmas it will be possible to get cheese directly from the Creamery at the Cheese Hatch. Rose said: “The cheese calendar is heavily weighted towards Christmas. “It’s a great time of year to eat cheese and there is a good reason why it is so popular at Christmas. “With something acidic like a really good chutney or pickled beetroot it can really just hit the spot at a time when it is difficult to find fresh, vibrant vegetables.” The Creamery will also be selling gift packs with a cheese board and offering advice on the best way to handle, store and eat cheese. "In farming, there is a saying, ‘You get big, get different, or get out."

Nettlebed Creamery, Henley-on-Thames T he creamery in the few farm buildings cleverly hide the fact that Nettlebed Creamery produces more than 20,000 cheeses a month. Nettlebed is owned by Rose Grimond, who started her working life in London, based in Borough Market, where she ran a company that helped bring products from the Orkney Islands into the South East. However, when she got married and started a family they decided to move back to her family home at Nettlebed. Her parents owned a dairy farm and one evening they were discussing what they could to do to expand. Rose said: “In farming, there is a saying, ‘You get big, get different, or get out.’ “We didn’t want to get bigger, or get out, so we decided to do something different and I suggested we do something with the milk. “I initially started to look into making ice cream, but decided cheese was the better avenue to take. “British cheese has really taken off in the last 15 years or so. The British don’t have any constraints on opportunity with cheese-making, and we are not shackled by tradition.” So Rose did all the research to find out how to run a cheesemakers before embarking on building bespoke facilities to make cheese. She visited a lot of other producers and notes “cheese-making is difficult, but the community is very supportive and wants to help each other”. The first milk came into the building in January 2015 and the creamery started with a team of two. In four years this has expanded to a team of 12. Nettlebed produce three cheeses. The first is Witheridge, which is a large 2kg wheel and is the only cheese in the UK to be aged in hay which is all grown on their organic farm. It won three stars at the Great Taste Awards 2019. In 2016, Bix was introduced. This is a soft cheese which is based roughly on Chaource from the Champagne region in France. It is a mould-ripened soft cheese, which won the Gold and Best Organic Cheese at the British Cheese Awards 2019 and in 2018 it won best Soft White Cheese The latest addition to the Nettlebed family is Highmoor, which was created in late 2018. It is a washed-rind semi-soft cheese, which is somewhere between a French eblochon and Italian tallegio.

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