“Historically, British cheese has been boring,” said Jonny Crickmore, Suffolk dairy farmer and creator of the award-winning Baron Bigod brie. “If you look back 40 years, it was just cheddar and red leicester, but the British are into stronger, stinkier, softer cheeses now.”
Sales figures show Crickmore is right: British customers are more cheese curious than ever before. Grocery retailer Ocado.com reports feta sales are up 23.2% on last year while halloumi is up 17.4% and burrata 17%. Traditional cheddar sales have only risen 4%.
Supermarket Asda has also seen increased sales of halloumi, cottage cheese and “free from” varieties. James Waters, Asda’s cheese and dairy product development manager, believes that recent growth in volume sales is due to the easing of inflation: the £/kg price is now down 4.9% year-on-year.
“It is interesting to note that, following deflation, shoppers are buying into speciality cheese, like blue cheese, and choosing to add those ‘little luxuries’ into their basket,” he said.
Waters said that customers are loving Asda’s garlic and herb grated cheese blend, with searches for the product spiking 2,039% after one viral social media post about the product.
Food writer Jassy Davis, whose cheese-themed recipe book Unbrielievable comes out in the autumn, has noticed tastes changing. “There was a time when halloumi was exotic,” she said. “Now we’re second only to Cyprus in halloumi consumption. Burrata is working hard to supplant mozzarella. Cheeses like comté are now a standard part of a supermarket’s deli range.”
ITV’s Saturday Morning chef James Martin will also release a cookbook, called Cheese, in November. TV’s Sunday Brunch presenter Morgan McGylnn Carr has just published The Complete Cheese Pairing Cookbook
Like many other foods, cheese has gone viral on TikTok. Videos about cottage cheese, baked and whipped feta, and grated halloumi have received millions of views. There are currently 463.5m posts about cheese on the social media platform.
Supermarkets are not the only beneficiaries of the growing interest. A recent survey of 100 freehold farmers found that 43% had started making new products such as cheese to diversify income. This was the route taken by Crickmore, who is the chairman of the UK’s Specialist Cheesemakers Association (SCA) as well as a third-generation farmer. The SCA started in 1989 with a handful of members and now represents over 300 makers.
“We started making a brie-style cheese because we saw that even though brie sales were growing year on year, no one was making a similar soft cheese. Lots of small specialist cheesemakers across the UK are creating their own versions of classic international cheeses,” he said.
Davis says that great cheese is created when two cultures meet, giving the example of provoleta: “This Argentinian cheese was developed by an Italian immigrant who realised that there was a gap in the market for something that could be sliced and cooked over hot coals as part of an asado or barbecue.”
Research into the nutritional value of cheese is also revealing a new side beyond the high fat and salt content. Prof Ian Givens, director of the Institute of Food, Nutrition and Health and vice-chair of a UK Food Standards Agency advisory committee, said that, despite the saturated fat content of dairy foods, some data showed a neutral relationship between the foodstuffs and cardiovascular disease.
“Now there is a range of things we know for dairy foods that either compensate or reduce risks. Milk proteins can reduce blood pressure. Constituents of cheeses reduce the amount of fat we absorb, which, of course, moderates blood lipids responses – including cholesterol,” he said.”
Even though cheese has been made for more than 2,000 years in the UK, Givens says we don’t fully understand the nutritional mechanisms at work. “Fermented dairy foods, which include cheese, do seem to have something special, but in truth we don’t really know why. There are some indications that the benefits may be mediated by effects on the gut microflora, but that’s not proven.”
Davis said: “It really is one of life’s simpler luxuries. A chunk of crumbly cheddar or a really oozy brie, some crackers and chutney takes minutes to put together but tastes amazing. Cheese makes things better.”
