Save Our Stilton! Britain’s favourite pungent cheese is for life, not just for Christmas

Patrick Mcguigan speaks to the specialists rescuing the tangy delicacy from extinction

Tension is mounting in the maturing room. Three Stilton makers, clad in white coats, gather nervously around a moulden-crusted cheese. “This is the moment of truth,” says Kim Kettle, who has made Stilton at Long Clawson Dairy for almost 50 years. The 8kg cylinder of Stilton is sliced in half to reveal two full moons of pale cheese marbled with blue veins. “You never quite know until you cut one open, but that’s just how we like it,” says Kettle.

Long Clawson has been making Stilton in Leicestershire for more than 100 years, but there’s a lot riding on this particular cheese – and not just because Christmas is coming. This new premium Stilton, called 1912, has taken three years to develop and bears the heavy responsibility of turning around an alarming fall in Stilton sales. It might be hard to believe at Christmas, but the country’s most famous blue cheese is slipping in the nation’s affections.

“There’s a big concern about the mid-term health of Stilton,” admits Bill Mathieson, Long Clawson’s managing director. “There’s been a 14 per cent decline in sales in the past five years, which equates to 1,200 tonnes being taken out of the market.”

According to consumer research carried out by Long Clawson, the typical Stilton buyer is over 55 and only purchases the cheese three times a year, on average. Younger shoppers often perceive the cheese as being too strong and salty. “Sweaty socks” were mentioned in interviews.

Covid was particularly tough on the sector, with sales dropping 30 per cent in 2020, as orders ground to a halt. Webster’s Dairy in Leicestershire, which had made Stilton for 150 years, was forced to shut down. Mathieson says that even if the current rate of decline slows, 25 per cent of Stilton sales could be wiped out in the next 20 years. “We don’t want Stilton to become a lost regional cheese,” he says. “It’s a fabulous British cheese.”

Stilton 1912 is made to a different recipe and aged for longer, to be creamy and not too salty or bitter. There’s also a QR code for recipes by Marco Pierre White, to encourage people to cook with the cheese all year round. “We want to reignite consumers’ love for Stilton,” says Mathieson.

That love stretches all the way back to the 18th century, when the cheese was sold at the Bell Inn in the village of Stilton – an important trading post on the way to London. Legend has it that the cheese became synonymous with Christmas because the best Stiltons were made at the end of the summer, when the milk was richest, and would take until December to mature.

The festive period is still hugely important today, with 40-60 per cent of all sales coming in November and December – a phenomenon that puts massive pressure on the five dairies that still make the blue cheese. (A sixth, called Shirevale, makes solely white Stilton.) Stilton is protected in law, meaning that it can only be made in Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire in a traditional way, but it remains a tiny part of the overall cheese market, accounting for just 1 per cent of sales.

Robin Skailes, managing director of Nottinghamshire Stilton company Cropwell Bishop, flies the flag for Stilton around the world with 25 per cent of sales coming from exports to North America, Europe, Australia and South Africa. “It’s Britain’s best blue,” he says. “When you go abroad, everyone has heard of it and it’s really sought after. We sell a lot more Stilton in France than we did 20 years ago.”

Derbyshire-based Hartington Creamery, the country’s smallest Stilton maker, has reasons to be cheerful as it sells Stilton directly to the public. Owner Robert Gosling expects to make £200,000 this Christmas, with younger people the main target market. “We make our Stilton to be younger and creamier than others,” says Gosling. “It’s about changing people’s mind sets.”

Further proof that Stilton has a bright future comes from Mathew Carver, owner of the Cheese Bar restaurant group, whose typical customers are professionals in their 30s. His Pick & Cheese restaurant in Covent Garden, which features a conveyor belt of cheese, serves Stilton with pear jam or a chocolate brownie.

“People pick the dish for the brownie, but then say how much they love the Stilton,” says Carver. “It has a unique place in British cheese history. It’s on the menu in all our restaurants all year round.”

That will be music to the ears of the cheesemakers back at Long Clawson, where Stilton is for life, not just for Christmas.