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The winner of the ‘Best English Cheese’ award at last year’s
World Cheese Awards, the world’s largest international
cheese competition, is hoping for success again in 2008.
28-year old Richard Hodgson scooped the award and Fortnum &
Mason trophy for his first ever cheese, Isle of Wight Blue,
last March and he will be aspiring to repeat the win later
this year with his brand new ‘Gallybagger’
cheddar-with-a-difference (sample enclosed).
Based on a cheddar recipe but with a totally different end
result, ‘Gallybagger’ is slang for scarecrow on the Isle of
Wight. This is where Hodgson makes his cheeses in a
state-of-the-art production facility created from a cowshed
and barn next to Queenbower Dairy, near Sandown. And Isle
of Wight Cheese, his just-a-year-old company, is one of 19
quality producers featured on The Wight Taste Trail a new
food trail by cross-Solent ferry operator Wightlink (0871
376 1000). Available free from Wightlink in booklet format
or as a downloadable pdf at
www.wightlink.co.uk/wighttastetrail, the trail
celebrates the diversity of natural produce grown on the
Island, which is rapidly gaining a reputation as one of the
UK’s top regional food centres.
Richard Hodgson and his mother/partner Julie, sell their
cheeses – which now total four and include Isle of Wight
Soft plus another recent introduction, the Bel Paese-style
Nippers Nammet – at the weekly Farmers’ Markets in Newport
(Friday) and Ryde (Saturday) as well as at local farm shops
and Island delicatessens. They are also served in the Isle
of Wight’s top hotels including The Seaview and The
Hambrough as well as at The St. Helens, a regional finalist
in UK TV’s Food Local Heroes competition, and at the
highly-rated Pond Café in Bonchurch.
More about Richard Hodgson (extract from The Wight Taste
Trail):
The Isle of Wight is known for many things but not, until
recently, for its cheese. That all changed when Isle of
Wight Blue, created by 28-year old Rich’s Isle of Wight
Cheese Company carried off the ‘Best English Cheese’ award
at the 2007 World Cheese Awards.
That achievement is all the more remarkable because Isle of
Wight Blue, a creamy and distinctively different blue
cheese, was created just months before the competition by
Rich, a former TV editor, and his mother Julie Hodgson,
partners in the fledgling Isle of Wight Cheese Company.
Mother and son were both cheese enthusiasts and when Julie
sold her long-established West Wight hotel business, they
took an intensive cheese-making course. After graduating
they set up a state of the art production facility in a barn
and cowshed which they painstakingly renovated, adjacent to
Michael Reed’s Queensbower Dairy.
Reed’s 88-stong Guernsey herd has been a crucial factor in
their success, “because Michael produces unpasteurised milk,
which retains its full flavour, and because we wanted
complete traceability,” says Rich.
The Hodgsons are rightly proud of the “food feet rather than
food miles” involved in their cheese production. “The cows
are milked at 5am and their milk is pumped along a pipe from
the dairy into our vat, so we can start making cheese almost
immediately,” says Rich.
The work involved in creating their four cheeses is a seven
days a week labour of love for the Hodgsons. “We start at
7am every day because cheese making is an intensive process,
especially for our blue cheese, which needs ongoing
monitoring throughout the four week ripening process,” says
Rich.
More info:
www.isleofwightcheese.co.uk
More about Wightlink’s Wight Taste Trail:
In a celebration of local excellence, Wightlink (0871 376
1000/www.wightlink.co.uk) has plotted a food and drink route
through some of England’s most scenic countryside to create
the Wight Taste Trail. Packed with local food champions,
there are 20 stops on the trail, each helping to explain why
the Isle of Wight is gaining a reputation as one of the UK’s
leading regional food centres.
Produced as a full colour A5 brochure, available free, The
Wight Taste Trail features the pick of the Island’s local
producers. In addition to Richard Hodgson and his Isle of
Wight Cheese company, there are profiles of two free range
producers: Susannah Seely, whose Dunsbury Lamb comes from
her flock that grazes on hillside overlooking the chalk
cliffs of Tennyson Down, and Sue Brownrigg, who rears
chicken and ducks on her traditional farm near the picture
postcard village of Godshill. Familiar faces from UK
supermarkets are also included, as the Isle of Wight is one
of Europe’s most prolific producers of garlic and cherry
tomatoes.
Another feature of Wightlink’s Wight Taste Trail is that it
profiles gourmet restaurants, which focus on serving local
food produce. They range from the fine dining restaurant at
the hotly rated Hambrough in Ventnor to the brasserie-style
St. Helens on the green at the seaside village of the same
name, which under chef/proprietor Mark Young is a finalist
this year’s UK TV Food Local Hero competition. A two-night
Wightlink package at The Hambrough, including dinner, bed
and breakfast and ferry crossings from Portsmouth or
Lymington costs £207pp midweek (two sharing) or £290pp at
weekends.
ENDS
Issued on behalf
of:
By:
WIGHTLINK LTD
Christine Ball PR
16th January
2008
Tel: 01798 874177 |
