Wensleydale Cheese is a company based in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales and uses the milk from the cattle raised on the Dales, which has a particular taste (due to the cattle grazing in this area). The company have a large shop, restaurant, cafe, and museum on their factory site so that cheese-lovers can visit. I've never actually tasted Wensleydale cheese before this visit, but I had heard of it because it was one of the cheeses that cheese-loving Wallace mentions in the stop-animation "Wallace and Gromit".
Wensleydale started to produce cheese in 1897 from small farmhouses. In these days, the cheese was a summer product because the cattle were in-calf in the winter and spring and any milk produced was used to make butter. In the 1930s, cheese was mainly sold for Christmas as a delicacy item, and times were hard on the creamery and forced a closure. Kit Calvert was a local business man who saved the cheese by showing it at agriculture shows and improving packaging so that it could be transported further and last longer.
During war years, the creamery could not make the cheese as it is a watery cheese and prone to mould, so the government enforced that it cease production. In 1992, the factory faced additional problems and had to close due to EU regulations which meant that the machinery must be updated, so management decided to close; this devestated the small community. Luckily, the determined workers were able to buy the factory back and continue production six months later. A visitor centre was opened as the first of its kind in England, and the rest is history.
Cheese-making in the Yorkshire Dales actually goes back a lot further than Wensleydale. The area was introduced to cheese-making by the French Cistercian monks that lived in the abbeys in the area. They taught the location population how to create cheese.
Wensleydale export roughly 10% of their cheese worldwide with the USA being its second largest buyer; the cranberries and Wensleydale is the best-selling, and I assume that this is mainly sold in time for Thanksgiving and the festive season (when the majority of people probably consume cheese).
The museum contains several old bits of equipment for cheese-making and milking cattle, and visitors can watch a demonstration on how the cheese is made and the process of cheese-making. Afterwards, visitors can go through the museum and then watch a small section of the factory where the workers are creating the cheese.
There is also plenty of information to read throughout the room, including a small area dedicated to Wallace and Gromit and sure to be a hit with children. A small Wallace and Gromit scene has been created with Sean the Sheep and a rocket with some information about the cheese.
After the museum, people can go into the shop which also houses the restaurant, cafe, and a cheese-tasting room. This room contains many flavours of cheese, including several Wensleydale offerings with sheep milk, normal and blended cheese (with cranberries, ginger, pineapple, or other ingredients). There were also other cheeses, such as cheddar, to try. Also, the Wensleydale cheeses are made for vegetarians. Milk is produced, but the only non-vegetarian cheese is the Kit Calvert cheese (named after the businessman who saved the company in the 1930s), which is a traditional cheese. (One of the ingredients of cheese is a made of cow stomach used in the cheese-making process to help solidify the cheese. The other Wensleydale cheeses actually use a vegetarian alternative.)
Also important to note is that the company now sell the whey (by-product of cheese-making) to a biofuel company for research and biofuel. In the past, it was difficult to get rid of and sometimes fed to pigs but still difficult to get rid of and pigs only needed it in moderation.
I had a light lunch of a cheese toastie.
And before I left, I had mint chocolate chip ice cream as this is sold in the shop. Of course, I did leave with a couple of cheeses.
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