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27/08/10 - Stilton Cheese, the PDO and Worzel Gummidge by Neil Sowerby

IT was encouraging to see James Paice, the Minister for Agriculture and Food, visiting Stilton's heartland. The Tory MP for South East Cambridgeshire and former Shadow agriculture spokesman has a background in farm management, so his Coalition appointment was an obvious horses for courses choice. Unlike some.

Ostensibly he was in the Melton area to learn about food labelling. More specifically to gauge how Stilton cheese and Melton Mowbray pork pies have protected and promoted their high quality image.

 Food tourism is all the rage and the spin-offs from such high profile products benefit a community as well as the six dairies crafting it. In the 21st century the quality of local produce is inexorably tied up with the whole weekend break package.

 We're still a long way off from 'Welcome To Stilton Country' with subtitles in Japanese on boundary boards across the three counties allowed to produce the cheese, but there is no doubt world renown helps swell visitor numbers.

We must remember that the purity of the Stilton image has not come about without real perseverance on behalf of the Stilton Cheesemakers Association in pursuing a PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) for it and gaining it in the mid-Nineties.

 Stilton was used to fighting its corner. There had been a very public spat in the Seventies over an American cheese producer's use of the word Stilton. A lengthy legal battle was finally won to force the name off the packaging of a blue-veined cheese made in Wisconsin.

 A PDO is what he French call an "Appellation d'origine controlee" or AOC. Giving it similar protected status, among cheeses, as Gorgonzola, Parmiggiano-Reggiano and Camembert de Normandie, as well as Champagne, Parma Ham and Balsamic Vinegar.

 You only have to compare the muddied path of Cheddar, a name that encompasses everything from the classic aged cheeses from the West Country with their mellow nuttiness, to some waxy, positively nasty impostors from around the globe.

 The European Union now recognises traditional West Country Farmhouse Cheddar cheese from Somerset, Dorset, Cornwall and Devon as a PDO, but it has come a too little too late to police internationally.

The consumption of Cheddar in the US alone is many times the amount  Cheddar could feasibly produce. Hence the "Cheddar" name is not protected, but the more specific name "West Country Farmhouse Cheddar" is.

In contrast Stilton is the most strictly prescribed cheese in the UK. Before the PDO was achieved it was protected by a certification trademark from the 1960s which stipulates how it can be made and that it can only be made in Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire. The same certification trade mark applies in 18 other countries throughout the world so assuring consumers in Stilton's key overseas markets about the origin of the cheese they are buying.

 

It's all about what the French call "terroir". These three counties contain the correct type of pasture to produce the appropriate milk. Critics may call it ring fencing. I say it reassures me whenever, from whatever source, I purchase a piece of Stilton.

 ON a lighter note, it was lovely to see the evergreen Una Stubbs appearing as Mrs Hudson in the BBC's sensational Sherlock series. It seems a long time since the Leicestershire-born actress was in Sixties sitcom Till Death Us Do Part.

 About the time (two decades later) she was most famous for playing Aunt Sally in Worzel Gummidge, she turned up at the Nantwich Cheese Show sampling a winner from Long Clawson Dairy. There she is, most un-Sallylike, in a press picture. Elementary, dear Worzel.