Burts Blue

A modern day Blue Cheese from Holmes Chapel, Cheshire, made by Claire Burt and Tom Partridge. They devised the recipe for the cheese on Claire’s kitchen table some 12 years ago and has now become a firm favourite in The Cheese Shop at Nantwich.

Claire spent many years in the food industry within the field of product development and food nutrition. Before her fondness for a soft and creamy blue cheese led her to practicing and devising a recipe for her now famous Burts Blue. Having no family farm to draw milk from Claire, had to buy in milk from local farms and pretty quickly she had to develop her cellar into a cheese making room, before moving to more well suited premises locally.

Each cheese is made with pasteurised milk and vegetarian rennet and is formed into basket shaped mounds. Penicillium Roqueforti, a natural blue mould, originally found in the caves at Roquefort in France and is added to the milk thus producing the distinctive blueing within the cheese. The magic really begins when each cheese is pierced by hand to allow oxygen to reach the interior, where small pockets of blue form in the creamy paste. As the cheese matures the rich paste or body of the cheese begins to break down, slightly, giving it that open texture making it such a distinctive cheese. The blueing Roqueforti spores also develop on the outside of the cheese giving it that sometimes dusty rind which is quite edible.

Burts Blue has a rich and creamy texture and a smooth, tangy and slightly salty taste that will stay on the tongue for quite some time. It’s best accompanied by a fruit jelly or Quince paste and maybe even a drizzle of local honey on a water biscuit or a Scottish Oatcake.