Weekender: Wensleydale Creamery launches Yorkshire cheddar

Yorkshire’s Wensleydale Creamery has announced the expansion of its Yorkshire dairy portfolio with the launch of Yorkshire Cheddar.

With cheddar accounting for nearly half of the cheese market in the UK, with a spend of £1.358bn, the firm said that it’s the perfect growth area, especially with more consumers turning towards home grown British product.

The official launch of the cheese took place on Wednesday, with a five-course tasting menu at Shears Yard in Leeds created by Yorkshire chef Steph Moon. She said: “It is so easy to create such delicious food when the ingredients are so good to start with.”

David Hartley, managing director, said the firm had invested heavily in the equipment needed to manufacture the cheese, as well as in storing the final product while it matured. Yorkshire Cheddar is typically aged for up to 15 months and the firm has signed contracts with Yorkshire-headquartered Morrisons to stock it across their northern stores.

He said it was important to innovate and diversify products in order to gain further market share. At first, the creamery will produce a “few hundred thousand tons” said Hartley, and he is confident will become thousands of tons in the future.

Hartley said: “We are very proud of our Wensleydale and that caters for a very specific part of the market and we are proud of that heritage.

“We feel that our versatile approach, expertise, passion and hard working nature means that we are ready to make other cheeses like cheddar and further boost our brand.”

The Wensleydale Creamery, which prides itself on centuries of cheese-making credentials, and with global recognition for its trusted brand, is taking the entry into the cheddar market very seriously. It is being made from Yorkshire milk and carefully crafted by cheese-makers.

“The ‘Yorkshire’ food brand is fast gaining recognition for its world-class offering – it’s fantastic to be a part of this food movement, and we are particularly proud to be introducing Britain’s favourite cheese to our family, marking a new and exciting stage in our growth,” said Hartley.

“We’ve tasted it, perfected it and considered every part of it, all to create a deliciously rich Cheddar that delivers a rounded multitude of flavours, with creamy subtle sweet, nutty notes and a savoury finish, brought together in a distinct firm and rugged textured extra mature cheddar cheese.”

Packaged in the Wensleydale Creamery’s premium style with its iconic branding, Yorkshire Cheddar will be available in 320g pre-pack and 1.25kg deli size formats, with a 200g pack joining the family shortly, adding to the Creamery’s collection of Yorkshire dairy products, including Yorkshire Wensleydale, Yorkshire Brie, Yorkshire Butter and Yorkshire Yogurt.

The creamery exports around 15% of its produce and one of its most popular products is the Wensleydale with cranberries. Hartley added that the new products being introduced allowed the firm to further enhance its Yorkshire brand and presence, at a time when authenticity of ingredients was essential.