Little Wallop is a cute (115g) beauty of a soft goats' milk cheese, washed in Somerset cider brandy and wrapped in vine leaves. Nutty and lemony when young, the flavour changes as the cider works its magic and the texture becomes silky.
More about Little Wallop
In the last few years Blur's bass player Alex James has done more than anyone to talk up English cheese via his columns in The Independent and The Observer, documenting his journey from amateur cheese-fancier to all-round food pundit.
When Juliet Harbutt, uber-cheese guru and the power behind the British Cheese Festival realised how much a sexy, articulate and media-friendly guy like Alex could do for the world of artisan cheese, she invited him to join the judging panel for her annual Awards. It was a natural step for the two - as the Evenlode Partnership - to move on to the creation of new cheeses, and there are now three, Blue Monday, Farleigh Wallop and Little Wallop.
The actual making is in the safe hands of Pete Humphries from Somerset's Whitelake Cheese (see White Nancy). If you want to know more about the whole process, there are a number of Alex's Cheese Diaries videos floating around the net ...
More About Whitelake Cheese
Whitelake Cheese is Roger Longman and Pete Humphries. When I met them, the name ‘Longman’ caught my attention straight away, as there’s a sizeable cheese wholesaler called Longman Cheese Sales based just off the A303 in south Somerset. Sure enough, he’s related to them, so Roger comes from cheese people - his own family made Caerphilly (a well established Somerset cheese, despite what the name would suggest) for 50-60 years, only giving up in 1997.
Pete - dry humour, trace of a Cheshire accent - was the first employee of Bath Soft Cheese, and worked there for 10 years: great experience, but he was keen to get going on his own. For his part, Roger was dying to get back into making, so the two teamed up and in 2004 Whitelake Cheese was born. The partnership made a lot of sense: Roger had premises, a herd of milking goats and - as you’re very aware when you meet him - a lot of energy; Pete was the experienced maker - full of ideas.
They started with a quickly-made soft cheese (relatively easy, low-risk), before creating the mould-ripened White Nancy. This was the first Whitelake cheese we became aware of, and it’s a real classic of its type (we use it a lot for wedding cakes). Pete, who has a reputation for naming cheeses after women, insists this is a hill near where he comes from.
Next came Rachel: this started out as a ‘regular’ hard goats cheese. One day a particular cheese developed some black moulds which Pete washed off with brine. This set off bacterial action which affected the character of the cheese in a way that he liked. Today’sRachel always uses this ‘washed rind’ process and has become their biggest seller. It’s a star item, and as Pete points out, no-one else in the country makes a washed rind goats’ cheese. It’s probably a niche cheese ... but they’ve clearly made it work.
And they’re still experimenting (I strongly suspect they can’t stop) and this restless exploration is one of their hallmarks. When I visited Pete had done a market to which he’d taken 21 different types of cheese. Other Whitelake cheeses you can buy from us are White Heart, Morn Dew and the wonderful Little Wallop. And I’ve a feeling we’ll be bringing you more before too long.
