Cheese review No.1 - Cathedral City Extra Mature Cheddar

I'm still waiting for my order of whiskies from Vinmonopolet to arrive. It should only be two more days, but then it'll be a few days of tasting before I'm ready to post another whisky review, so in the mean time I thought I'd have a go at a cheese review. It's the first time I've made cheese tasting notes, so I apologize in advance for wasting your time if it's rubbish. I've been reading up about cheese tasting and watching cheesy youtube videos for a couple of days so it shouldn't be all bad. Hopefully my cheese reviews will improve when I get a bit more experience and some interesting cheeses.

Bit of an intro

I've chosen Cathedral City to start with. I know it's not exactly a gourmet cheese, but I wanted to start with a cheddar because it's the most familiar kind of cheese to me and I wanted to get a kind of point of reference for future cheese tasting. There aren't anything like as many cheddar cheeses available here in Norway as there are back home. In fact I've seen three different ones including this one, two English and one Norwegian. This one's probably my favourite of the three, partly because of the price, and partly because of the texture.

It's a fairly standard supermarket cheddar in the UK. If I still lived there and wanted cheddar I'd probably go for the supermarket's own brand, since I would usually eat cheddar in the form or cheese on toast or a cheese and pickle sandwhich with lots of pickle. I wouldn't usually be taking the time to appreciate all the nuances of the cheesy flavour so wouldn't usually want to pay for a particularly interesting one. Cathedral city is clearly heavily marketed and is not what you would call an artisanal cheese. The website features their TV advert, which shows the cheese as a topping for something that might be cottage pie, not being enjoyed by itself. The sound track in the advert is about coming home, so I think they're aiming for the comfort food market, rather than the cheese aficionados. The website also has recipes for various comfort food type recipes, like macaroni cheese, cheesy pasta bake, etc. Have a peep here.

It's a cows milk cheese and is pasturised and I think it's aged for 14 months, but I could be wrong there. I just found out what "cheddaring" is in the cheese making process. They add the rennet to the milk and allow it to separate into curds and whey, then drain off the watery whey, as with pretty much all cheeses. As it's draining the curd is cut into blocks and stacked, which helps to squeeze out more of the whey and results in a harder cheese.

Cathedral City is made in Davidstow in Cornwall, which isn't a city and doesn't have a cathedral. Despite this deception it's the UK's most popular brand of cheddar and is also the UK's 10th most popular brand of anything. It's even more popular than starbucks according to Wikipedia. I think they're just aiming for a "British" feel in their marketing, which seems to work for them.

Almost forgot, 200g cost me 45kr, which is almost five pounds! It's often on offer in British supermarkets for as little as £2 for a pack of two 200g pieces. Basic Norwegian cheeses aren't usually that much, but there's the cost of importing to consider and the fact that it tastes better than all basic Norwegian cheeses. Norway does produce some really good artisan cheeses which I'll have a go at in future, but they cost a lot more and are less easily available.

Appearance

It looks like a typical British supermarket cheddar in appearance, by which I mean it's a block of uniformly light yellow cheese.

It's pretty much just a yellow lump.

You can see a few cracks in it which appear to be the cracks you might get between lumps of curd during manufacturing, rather than the kind you get if you leave it out by accident and it does dry. The whitish bits you can see in the picture are from cutting it, there's no mould on the surface or blooms of bacteria or any of those tasty things.

Body

Like all cheddar cheeses the Cathedral City has a firm body. It's a hard cheese after all. I've had firmer cheddars, I've had softer cheddars, but this has a pretty typical cheddar body.

Texture

If you kneed a little piece between your fingers it smoothes out and becomes kind of pasty. I hear that this comes from aging, a younger cheese would feel more rubbery. The Norwegian cheddar I've tried had a kind of rubbery texture (which a lot of Norwegian cheeses seem to have) so I assume that one was a younger cheese. This one also cracks quite easily. It doesn't bend, again showing it's lack of rubberiness and therefore it's age. Although it breaks easily I wouldn't say it was crumbly. There was some wetness on one side of the block when I took it out of the packet, but I'm not sure if that had been sweated out of the cheese, or if it was condensation from the plastic packet.

Aroma

A pretty typical cheddar aroma, but quite strong. It smells very cheesy, but not in a feet way, in a nice cheesy way. There's a bit of citrus fruitiness to the aroma too, a little like orange juice but not so orangey. There's a creaminess to it as well. For me it was kind of reminiscent of orange flavoured yoghurt, but not so orangey or yoghurty. Not a very complex aroma really, but fairly strong for a cheddar and very pleasant.

Flavour

A pretty typical cheddar flavour. It has a bit of a tang to it, but I wouldn't go as far as to say sour, and it has a bit of sweetness too. I think there's a slight woody note that comes in towards the end and a long, deeply savoury aftertaste. It coats the mouth and a really big bite would probably gum you up for a while. It almost feels sticky as you chew it. It's the kind of rich mouth coating sensation that benefits from a bit of acidity to break it down, so a good British pickle or chutney would go very well with this cheese. The only pickle I've got in the house is lime pickle with garlic, and the lime flavour didn't go with the cheese very well, but I'm certain that a nice tangy regular pickle would work brilliantly. Or a nice slice of tomato in a sandwich. Lovely.

Now and again you get a little crunch as you chew it. There are tiny areas of cheese crystals which feel almost chalky. I did  bit of research and it turns out a lot of hard cheeses have cheese crystals and they could be made of pretty much anything. Apparently in cheddar they're most likely to be calcium lactate crystals.

A few more comments

This cheese reminds me of home and makes me feel English. We Brits make some awesome cheese.

Conclusion

Not the most interesting cheese ever, but still a pretty good one. Not a great deal of complexity to it, but a nice strong but mellow cheddar flavour. Would I bu it again? Yes, it's the best cheddar that's regularly available to me, although it's a bit expensive in Norway. As a basic cheddar cheese it's a pretty good one. The strength of the flavour would make it a great to use in cooking, sandwiches, salads or whatever, and it's definitely nice enough to eat on its own, although a bit of something to cut through the richness would help it go down. This is the first time I've reviewed a cheese so giving it a score won't be easy. I'll use my standard one to ten scale again: Very nice supermarket cheddar and very available., but lacks a bit of complexity. It'd be interesting to compare Cathedral City's mild, mature, extra mature and 20 month old vintage cheddars all in one sitting, but sadly only the extra mature is available in Norway.

I hope you enjoyed this review. I enjoyed writing it, so I'll do more cheese reviews in future. I hope I don't become obese. If you meet me and I look a bit chunky, let me know and I'll jog round the block a few times.