Renegade Monk Organic

Renegade Monk is made by husband and wife team Marcus Fergusson and Penelope Nagle on their twenty-two acre smallholding, Feltham Farm, near Wincanton in Somerset. Passionate about cheese since childhood, Marcus began making Renegade Monk in 2016 after the family moved out of London.  

Marcus is passionate about cheese and attended a course at River Cottage, (home to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall) to learn about cheese making before developing his unique recipe for Renegade Monk. This was inspired by holidays in France, when time was spent enjoying the famous washed rind cheeses such as: Epoisses and Langres. 

Renegade Monk is produced using organic milk sourced from a local herd of cows at Bruton Organic Dairy. Feltham Farm itself is not certified organic but is run on organic principles, as well as aiming to be self-sufficient and sustainable. The farm is home to chickens, geese, sheep and also rare breed pigs that happily eat the 300 litres of whey produced weekly in the cheese room. 

Renegade Monk is extremely labour intensive to produce. It is made in small batches totally around two hundred cheeses each week. Blue cultures are added to the pasteurised milk, then the set curds are hand turned, salted and pierced. The cheeses are bathed in an organic  Funky Monkey ale from Frome ale whilst being chilled and  matured for four weeks.

Each Cheese has a bold and assertive taste yet with a delicate pungency enhanced by the ale wash. They bear a slight floral undertone that almost masks the fact that penicillium Roqueforti is added to the milk although it isn’t visible in the final cheese.