Baron Bigod: Britain Reimagines Brie (ft. Nick Bayne, Fine Cheese Co.)

In this episode of Curd Is The Word, Brittany sits down with Nick Bayne, Head Cheesemonger at the Fine Cheese Company in Bath, England, to talk all things Baron Bigod — the British bloomy-rind cheese that looks like a brie but absolutely is not.

They dig into Nick’s journey from actor to cheesemonger, why raw milk cheese imports are currently restricted in the UK, and how Baron Bigod came to be through thoughtful farming, Montbéliarde cows, and a deep respect for land stewardship. Nick breaks down what makes Baron Bigod so unique: its thin wrinkled rind, even breakdown, savory depth, and why it avoids the bitterness common in modern brie-style cheeses.

If you’ve ever written off brie as “boring,” this episode will change your mind.

References:

Cheese

• Baron Bigod

Websites

• https://fenfarmdairy.co.uk/pages/about
• https://www.finecheese.co.uk/products/baron-bigod

Transcript

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (00:01.24)
Hi cheese friends I am here today with Nick Bayne who is... Hey Nick, how are you? Good. So Nick comes to us from across the pond over with this Fine Cheese Company and he brings us a fantastic cheese that can be a little difficult to get in the U.S. But first, let's find out about Nick, his cheese journey and what brings him here today.

Nick Bayne (00:08.491)
dude. Yeah, there we go.

Nick Bayne (00:28.68)
sure thing. What would you like to know?

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (00:31.298)
Well, I think it's really interesting that you're not from England, correct?

Nick Bayne (00:34.526)
No, I'm not. I'm originally from Seattle and then San Francisco where my mom and dad and stepdad still live. I spent a good deal of time in New York. But yeah, I'm originally American before I jumped ship over to the UK.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (00:53.474)
And what I guess, one of the cool things I love when it comes to talking to cheese people is like, what was your cheese trajectory? You know, were you always into food as a child? Were you in college to go pre-med? What brought you to where you are today?

Nick Bayne (01:08.594)
Well, for sure I was into food as a child. My mom likes to tell me that I used to sniff and still do everything before I eat it. Sorry, I'm gonna start that one more time, because I realized I just touched the cheese and it went down into a bin with the bit that was on the top.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (01:22.86)
No, you're good.

Nick Bayne (01:26.078)
So yeah, for sure I was into food as a kid. My mom likes to tell me that I used to sniff everything before I ate it and to be honest I still kind of do the same thing. I used to be able to tell my favorite Monterey Jack brand apart from all the others and wouldn't eat anything other than that particular brand of Monterey Jack. I haven't always been into cheese itself as a career. was first an actor.

before that, but I grew up in the kitchen with my mom cooking. She taught me so much of what I know in terms of how to cook, how flavor is created, how to build flavor, how to enjoy food. She used to take us to farmer's markets way before. That was a cool thing to do, just to find fresh produce in Seattle. So I grew up loving food and in a family that really loved and enjoyed food. Every time we get together.

pretty much the first conversation we have is where are going to eat before we get anything else. So food runs in my blood. Food is joy to me. Food is life. When I was first looking for a day job as a young actor, because that's what I was doing. My degree from the University of Utah is in acting. Later I got a master's degree in theater from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. But my first day jobs I was looking for were in food.

After a couple of restaurant hosting gigs, which were pretty depressing, I moved back home to San Francisco after college and looked for a job more in a food career that might lead to something like being a sommelier or specializing in something because the way my brain works is I find something that's my favorite and I memorize everything about it. I create a sort of internal encyclopedia.

And I found a job listing for a company called AG Ferrari. No longer exists, but it was a chain of specialty Italian grocery stores in San Francisco. Really good for a young gourmet. And I went there initially more interested in wine and very quickly learned how amazing cheese was.

Nick Bayne (03:34.793)
And over the years, I gravitated so much more towards cheese. I remember a seminal piece of Morbier that my supervisor at the time and later a bit of a mentor and also an ex of mine now brought back from France and said, we're Nick you have to try this. I'd never had Morbier before let alone a raw cow's milk washed rind from France and it blew my mind and I was kind of hooked from that point. So from there on I then moved to Chicago.

Moved to Scotland for a year to get my masters in theater, moved to New York, was trying to work as a young actor, which is really difficult in New York. If you've ever tried or anyone you know has tried, it's a hard, hard road. And I got a day job as a cheese monger and charcutier at Dean and DeLuca at their flagship store back when it existed. And under the tutelage of some really great cheese people, Chantal Girard, Alex Garcia.

I grew to really love cheese as a career. And so I had these two equal passions, theater and cheese. And one of them was making me miserable, chasing gigs, attempting to find work, getting unpaid work, just really, really struggling to survive and to compete against everyone in the city. And the other was bringing me nothing but joy.

deliciousness, passion, and so I made what turned out to be a pretty simple decision. Follow the cheese. I followed it to Bedford Cheese Shop when it was run by Charlotte Kamen and Nate McElroy and the rest is kind of history. From there, my cheese career blossomed and my love of cheese blossomed.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (05:20.685)
I love that so much. I find that the more cheese people I talk to, no one ever, well, not as many people have started in cheese and finished off in cheese. It's always like we were doing something else, corporate America, you know, whatever they were doing. You are an actor and it's, you know, cheese just brings people together. It brings people joy. And I love, love, love to hear that. I do have to know though, do you have the same feelings when it comes to a washed rind French Morbier?

or have you found a new favorite?

Nick Bayne (05:51.847)
It still has a really special place in my heart. And then because it has a special place in my heart, I'm really specific about which Morbier I enjoy, which Morbier I carry. We're actually at a difficult point in the UK. I don't know if people know about it back in the States, but we're at this difficult point where currently, raw cow's milk cheeses from France, Italy, and Spain are banned from import into the UK because of lumpy skin disease in those countries. And our

agricultural organization, DEFRA, has banned the import of them. Even though raw cow's milk cheeses specifically pose no risk to cows because cows aren't eating those cheeses. So I actually can't get my gateway cheese in the UK right now. I can get a very good version of it that's made in the Cotswolds, a really wonderful cheese called Ashcombe.

But to actually get Morbier, I would have to go to France or into the EU and find it there. So now it's become this rarity and special thing when I do get to have it.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (06:57.495)
How long has that been going on and do you see that coming to a close at some point?

Nick Bayne (07:00.892)
So that's been going on since May. And it specifically applies to any raw cow's milk cheese made before May 23rd. So the number of cheeses we can't get right now is quite shocking. Raw milk, Taleggio for example. So I have a beautiful Taleggio back here, but it's a pasteurized organic one. We can't get Reblochon because that's an AOP cheese that has to be raw milk.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (07:03.852)
Okay.

Nick Bayne (07:26.718)
can't get French Mondeur, so we have a beautiful Swiss Vacherin Mont d'Or, but not French. Can't get Saint-Nectaire Fermier, one of my all-time favorite cheeses and one I went to go select last year. Can't get Mahon, raw milk Mahon from Spain. Can't get Picón Bejes Tresviso one of my favorite blue cheeses. That's a raw cow's milk blue. And the list goes on and on. We're able to get pasteurized versions of things, like we have a beautiful pasteurized Camembert from...

from Rodolphe Le Meunier right now, but not a raw milk Camembert de Normandy specifically. And it's a difficult time right now, to be honest. It affects the producers, it affects the cheese shops, it makes all of us who work with artisan cheeses, and especially those that are raw milk, quite nervous about the future of raw milk cheese in this country and what the government might or might not plan to do. And the thing about it is...

lumpy skin disease release into export has to do, I'm just going go back there for one second. And the thing about it is when it comes to lumpy skin disease, lifting this ban has to do with a series of testing periods that come clean.

Right. You have to have clean tests over a certain period of time. I forget if it's 21 or 28 days, but it's something like that. And that's a long time, and new cases keep springing up. The Savoie, in particular, has been a hotbed of this. And that makes it quite difficult. And the fact that it's expanded into Italy, into Spain, is really worrying. So we don't actually know when that will be lifted, but our hope as importers of European artisan cheese

as lovers of raw milk cheeses and frankly as people who just want to eat some great cheese, we don't know. We don't know but we can hope.

Nick Bayne (09:41.18)
silent

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (10:18.27)
Alright, let's try this again. Can you hear me?

Nick Bayne (10:20.86)
I can hear you.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (10:22.418)
Okay, all right. That's such a huge bummer because I feel like when we think of raw milk cheese, we immediately think of going literally internationally to be able to try them. I know I was so delighted to find on a recent trip to Portugal over the summer, I stumbled into the one and only French cheese shop and got real unpasteurized French cheeses in early June and it was amazing. I was like, forget it.

I have a soft spot for unpasteurized French cheeses, so I can only imagine as someone who is able to eat them at whenever they would have wanted how devastating this must be. But let's, yeah.

Nick Bayne (10:59.088)
It is. We're lucky to still get the raw goat's milk cheeses. We're lucky to still get raw sheep's milk cheeses in. It's a bovine disease. And that's where we're seeing this right now. And so fingers really, really crossed. expect the deferral lift the ban with cheese specifically, again, because cheese itself doesn't pose any sort of risk. And more so that...

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (11:03.41)
Okay, it's just specifically cow. Right.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (11:12.542)
I'll cross my eyes and toes.

Nick Bayne (11:24.432)
The spread of lumpy skin disease will be limited, vaccinations will happen, and hopefully we get to a place where this isn't the ban that has to happen anymore.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (11:36.36)
I agree, I agree. We will all cross our fingers, toes, eyes, anything we can do for you guys. And on that topic, tell me, where are you standing right now? Why are you there? What are you doing?

Nick Bayne (11:49.851)
well.

Welcome to the Fine Cheese Company shop on Walcott Street in Bath. So I'm the head cheese monger for the Fine Cheese Company. I run the shop, the cheese shop side of it at least. I curate the cheeses we have here, among other things. I also am in charge of staff training, of education for a lot of our customers as well, and our wholesale customers. I help to select some of our cheeses.

And generally my life revolves around this beautiful place, all these cheeses behind me. You can't see but there's some beautiful little cheeses in the window over here. And this shop has been here since 1990. We have been here 35 years. It was founded by Anne-Marie Dias, the founder of the Fine Cheese Company. And it was her mission to support not only artisan dairying in the UK, but also to support artisan cheesemakers in Europe. And so from the beginning,

We've been an international cheese monger specializing both in European artisan production cheeses and British artisan production cheeses and supporting the cheese makers because that's what it's really about for us, isn't it? We sell cheese, absolutely, but so much of that is to not only be that last point of contact between the farm itself and you all who are eating the cheese.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (13:04.69)
It is.

Nick Bayne (13:14.844)
but also to be in support of those people who are making it because that's tradition, that's daring history, that's small producers, and those are people who really work on a very thin margin and need to be supported. So that's what we're here for.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (13:30.525)
And I also find too with these smaller cheese makers, especially over in the EU and the UK and whatnot, there's not many, like they're generational. So there's not many people coming and starting over or starting fresh. And they're coming into a lot of points too where the family doesn't always want to take over this business because to your point, these thin margins are not where they want to be. we're kind of got to keep supporting each other. It's like one big cycle of cheese.

Nick Bayne (13:59.439)
Absolutely. Yeah, like you said, there are a number of different multi-generational cheese makers here in the UK. Some who go back as far as the 19th century, like the Keens. Some who are just a couple generations in, in terms of daring farmers and cheese makers, like Johnny Crickmore, who we'll talk about in a second here. And some who are really carrying on the tradition of their families before them, making a very specific, traditional heritage cheese. And they need that support because...

without that support, without those cheeses being popularized and sampled to people and sold to people, those traditions can vanish really easily.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (14:40.785)
I agree. And actually, since we're on the topic, you've been a cheesemonger in the US, you've been a cheesemonger abroad. What are the, I mean, high level contrast, similarities? What do you prefer? What do you want to do in the future? Do you want to stay where you are?

Nick Bayne (14:56.456)
Well, I'll tell you what, I'm very happy with what I do. I have found such a home with the Fine Cheese Company. I've been with the Fine Cheese Company for nearly, nearly eight years now, to be honest. I'm UK in January of 2018. I started working for FCC in the beginning of February of 2018. And the rest is history. I did start in our former London shop, which doesn't exist anymore, and I was managing that. And then I moved out here to the West Country, where I've been

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (15:07.753)
Wow.

Nick Bayne (15:26.366)
elbow room and I'm nearer to all the dairy producers and get to travel from my home in Bristol to beautiful UNESCO World Heritage protected Bath every day so I am quite happy here. I happen to be very interested in affinage and

in kind of late stage, affinage, triage, special preparations done by cheese shops. I'm very inspired by a lot of the Parisian and generally French Fromageries who really take the time to bring in cheese and give them some slight alterations, like these special touches just towards the end of their maturing life. And so...

I compete and the whole Fine Cheese Company competes in the affineur of the year competition, but it's something that's very near and dear to my heart here in the UK and we've done quite well on that. So I'm ripening a cheddar right now in a very special way that I'm not going to reveal.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (16:23.091)
Yeah.

Nick Bayne (16:26.416)
I think affinage is a big thing for me. Continuing to grow what we do here. Instead of sitting on being a really wonderful cheese shop, there's always something new we can do, something different and unique we can bring.

People have asked me if I want to open my own cheese shop one day. I think there's kind of a dream of that. What cheese monger doesn't dream of having their own shop? It's a harder thing to do. It's a much harder thing to do than to dream of. And so for the time being, I am happy here at the Fine Cheese Company selling the best possible cheese I can to the wonderful people of Bath.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (16:47.977)
So true.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (17:01.297)
I didn't realize you had that affinage spirit about you and I personally love when cheese shops do that because there's been so many times where I've had, for example, the Jasper Hill, they make their blue cheese and they finish it there, but also Murray's is finishing their own version and to be able to taste the differences because of the different ways it's been handled. And I also personally just love when you go into a room filled with wheels of cheese and they stick the iron in, you're tasting each, you know, collection from different dates and you can taste different nuances.

That's one of my favorite things to do.

Nick Bayne (17:33.946)
We have our maturing rooms just outside of Bath. So that's where our headquarters are, just outside of the city itself. And our cheese rooms are there. we select cheeses there, we hold cheeses there, we also ripen cheeses there. And we do some special projects there as well. And people don't always know that about us, but we do.

That's where we also work with most of our affineur of the year cheeses, is again a competition here in the UK run by the Academy of Cheese. It's

becoming more and more of a formal competition too. It's quite a fun thing, both to push what we can do to try to alter a cheese or heighten the cheese in some way. So for instance, last year I took a Quicks cheddar and ripened it like an Appenzeller, which was a challenge and was absolutely delicious in the end. We've done some really wonderful special washes on some washed rind cheeses with whiskey. We did a salt neck tear ripening of a

Caerphilly last year. So there's a lot of scope to do some interesting things in the UK in general but certainly here at the Fine Cheese Company and we're doing more and more of that kind of stuff. I have a special wash right now of a Langres where we're doing a Cognac wash to finish it.

just to not really make it boozy, but to break it down a little bit more. Almost like the final wash of an Epoisse we're using a similar idea, but with cognac rather than Marc de Bourgogne And it's yielding a really wonderfully meaty version of a Langres as opposed to the kind of more acidic one, and dry one you see sometimes. We're breaking it down nicely, getting some good proteolysis going, and it's a delicious experiment.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (19:21.171)
I love that. Also, I will do a quick self plug. If you guys want to know more about the Academy of Cheese, I did a podcast review where I reviewed level one as I took it and it is a great place to learn more even though it doesn't matter really where you are. The cheeses that are mentioned, especially level one, are available across the world. So it is a great opportunity to learn more about one of our favorite foods.

Nick Bayne (19:42.889)
Level one is a baseline level of knowledge for cheesemongers, cheese makers, cheese importers, cheese exporters, cheese retailers, cheese enthusiasts, chefs, and just really anyone who's curious about cheese. And it's really achievable, and it's a delicious way to get your first baseline level of knowledge.

I really support the Academy of Cheese. As a company, we support the Academy of Cheese. We're a trainer. And it's been a really great project to watch develop.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (20:19.645)
Have you done any of the other further levels?

Nick Bayne (20:22.398)
I'm working on my level 2 right now. I should have it ages ago. I just keep running out of time to do these things. But I'm working on my level 2 right now. And after that I'll go for my level 3. And who knows, after that maybe a Master of Cheese.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (20:24.263)
All right, well we wish you good luck. I know.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (20:38.791)
All right, I have faith in you. I could see that happening. It's just to your point. Yeah, there's no, every time I sit down to read one thing, I'm like, this is from four years ago.

Nick Bayne (20:48.798)
Who has time really, especially now that we're in crazy season right before Christmas, it's you know, nobody has time to do extra things right now.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (20:57.607)
I am right here with you. So without further ado, we came here today to talk about Baron Bigod which is a soft, bloomy, rind cheese. And while, like I said, this cheese is more widely available internationally from where I am sitting, there are some cheese shops in the US that do carry it. Most of you probably are like, this is a brie. However, we are here today to explain why this is so, so, so much more. And this cheese deserves its own, honestly, its own category, in my opinion.

So Nick, why don't you enlighten us with what you have in your hand, who makes it, kinds of milk, you know, and so we'll just keep it rolling.

Nick Bayne (21:36.223)
So what I have in my hand here is my working piece right now of a beautiful three kilo wheel of Baron Bigod. If I move it close to the camera, you can see this absolutely gorgeous cheese, the vermiculation on the rind there, a beautiful blooming rind, and a lovely, supple, substuous paste right in the middle there. So Baron Bigod.

begins not as a story about cheese, but as a story about farming, a story about milk, and like all artisan cheeses, a story about people. And the person in this case is Johnny Crickmore, who is the farmer and cheesemaker behind Baron Bigod. So he grew up on this dairy farm, on Fen Farm, which is their farm there, and his aunt and uncle,

were in charge of it at the time. And he grew up really learning about traditional farming, about dairy practice. And as he became a dairy farmer himself, he began to wonder if there was something that could be done to add value to his milk, to really highlight how special his milk was, to just be a little bit different than everyone else.

because frankly, Johnny is a very unique and individualistic thinker. He's very forward-thinking. He's, like many farmers actually, especially those in artisan cheese, really always considering what else can happen.

So initially his first thought was to sell his milk directly. He'd been inspired by a poultry farmer who sold his eggs directly with an honesty box just in front of his farm. And so Johnny first started doing this with his raw milk and then later was inspired to purchase a vending machine.

Nick Bayne (23:30.45)
because he had seen these vending machines for milk in Europe and so got a vending machine for their raw milk at the

Nick Bayne (23:40.51)
And it should be said that this is a story initially of raw milk and raw milk cheese. Baron Bigod no longer is a raw milk cheese, it's pasteurized cheese, but its origins do begin in "cheesemaking"...

So beyond just the vending machine of milk, which was a successful project, but not, to be honest, bringing in as much revenue as they would hope, Johnny looked to the natural route of making cheese out of his milk.

And he consulted with the really famous French dairy consultant, Ivan Larcher, who is just a fantastic wealth of knowledge about cheese making. So many of the greatest cheese makers out there have worked with him, have consulted with him. He is behind more cheeses than you would even realize. And he and Johnny talked and he said, I would be happy to help you with that, but you need to improve the quality of milk itself.

no more of this Holstein because Holstein farming frankly

Holsteins are a lovely cow. produce a lot of milk, higher liquid content though, not as much protein, fat, and solid component as a whole. And also you have to provide a lot more input into the actual farming, More fertilizers, more specific grasses. They're not really naturally good browsers for cheese. And so, Johnny went to France.

Nick Bayne (25:14.618)
and farm by farm over 30 different farms he purchased Montbéliarde cows. Now if you know anything about the Montbéliarde cow you'll know that they are one of the great

cheese cows. They are responsible primarily for Comté. Comté is made primarily from Montbéliarde milk. It can also be made from Simmental but mostly Montbéliarde cows. They're behind Reblochon They're behind Mont D'Or. They are a great cheese cow from the Jura. They don't provide a lot of milk, but the milk they do provide is really, really high in...

cheese cows. And Johnny's farm, Fen Farm, is called Femme Farm because it's on a Fen, Stowe Fen to be specific, along the Waveney River Valley.

outside of Bungie, which is an old market town in Suffolk. Suffolk being on the east coast of the UK. And it's a really marshy area, but it's great for grass growth. Fen is a really peaty marsh, and that means good salinity in the soil as well. Really rich soil and all kinds of diversity in the plants that are gonna grow there. And so you need a cow who is a naturally really good grazer and will benefit from grazing on that kind of soil.

And so he got these Montbéliardes and started off making cheese with Montbéliarde cow's milk. Since then that's expanded a little bit. He's cross-bred some jerseys into theirs to get some nice butter fat content into their milk as a whole. But it's still a very Montbéliarde driven cheese. the quickest kind of cheese and the best sort of cheese he could make out of that was something inspired by Brie de Meaux.

Nick Bayne (27:04.014)
Now this isn't Brie it's a Brie de Meaux because Brie de Meaux of course is a PDO cheese right? has to be made in Meuse, east of Paris in the kind of Meuse department in the France. I'm going to miss that fact slightly but basically east of Paris you find your Brie de Meaux production region nearby you find where Brie de Nange is made, Brie de Melon.

That's the brie making region. And he was really interested in making that. But also being this kind of person who's very in touch with the land, who's very in touch with going back to more traditional ways of farming, Johnny didn't want to make this kind of thick, rinded, bitter

buttery style of brie and that's not what Ivan was interested in either. They really wanted to see what the milk would bring and what they could do to show off that milk. So Baron Bigod you see here, if I bring it close again, you see that nice wrinkly rind up there. And that's the lovely Geotrichum Candida

Geotrichum being a yeast imitating mold. And what we know is that cause of wrinkly molds, although more and more we're also finding penicillium candidum causes wrinkles as well. But they really drive that to begin with. what's great about that is it starts to break down the cheese really wonderfully, but also helps to balance out bitter flavors later on. Cheeses that are so heavily penicillium candidum sometimes have a really kind of bitter, burnt,

bit of a thick rind to them and be a bit chewy. Sometimes experience more problems with separation of the rind. But they wanted something that would ripen really gradually and in a way that would create complexity in flavor rather than just break down and paste.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (28:48.254)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Bayne (29:03.58)
And so here you have this beautiful cheese that while it is very much in the style of a Brie de Meaux and you'd be forgiven for looking at it and thinking, Brie, tastes very much its own. The really wonderful thing again about the way they treat these cows is that they're out and about on the fence for most of the year.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (29:13.085)
you

Nick Bayne (29:25.694)
until November and then November to March they're usually indoors, the fens get flooded, the cows would have to swim, there would be no way to really have them grazed and there also won't be grass regrowth at that time. But what they are fed is almost exclusively hay and silage that was made from the farm itself. So there's still intaking all of those plants and they've identified over 65 different plants that the cows are eating out in the fen which is ridiculous.

Especially when you think that, for instance, in the Alpine meadows of the Jura Mountains, they're usually about 50 to 55 different plants that the cows are eating. I mean, that's incredible. They're getting just insane nutrition out of this and insane complexity into the milk. And so the cheese being fairly straightforward shows that off really well. And even though it's a pasteurized cheese now, rather than...

they changed a couple years ago. It still has this wonderful depth of flavor, this lovely lingering finish to it. When you cut into it, and I'm going to cut into it here so you can really see.

This is a nice ripe piece by the way.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (30:33.799)
Yeah, she's gooey

Nick Bayne (30:36.008)
So I'll bring that up to the camera there. You can see towards the back end here, there's still a little bit of that lactic curtain there. That's really wonderful actually. We love a little bit of acidity still in the cheese, but you can see a really even breakdown all throughout. That little bit is just left there. Lovely little eyelets still in there and just even proteolysis all the way through. Nothing splitting off that rind there. It's a phenomenal bit of cheese. And when you taste it, you get these wonderful, slightly cabbages.

that's been a traditional Brioche way, but really startlingly garlicky flavors out of it, which I really love. It has a slightly higher salinity than a typical Brie de Meaux or similar Brie, and while so much of that comes down to the salting of the cheese itself, I really do think some of that is in the salinity of this milk from these marshy pastures. It's wonderful. It's a beautiful bit of structured cheese.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (31:33.513)
I also want, if you could touch upon, the shape of the wheel itself is one of a kind. It kind of has this like pizza shape to it. It's thin, it's wide, but it's still circular. And yet a lot of times, breathe, breathe, Meux you know, you find them to be their tiny little rounds, larger, taller rounds. So why is that?

Nick Bayne (31:38.013)
Yeah.

Nick Bayne (31:55.295)
where can see this little dip right there on the side that that's what you're talking about. And that just has to do with their method of maturation of this cheese. They do wrap it in...

thicker layer fairly early. So what you're seeing right there is a lovely kind of ridge and right under that, that little dip, is that initial proteolysis towards the edge. So it really ripens there heavily first, but you still get this really nice even again lactic curve all the way through. And so that little hump there will lessen as the cheese ripens, but it does start with this kind of little

bounce right there, where you get this lovely tight curve in the center that is slowly breaking down and as that loses moisture and as those proteins break down, you get this lovely kind of slight dip, but really even layer and vermiculate it all across the top.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (32:46.247)
Absolutely beautiful. It's one of a kind. I feel like when you see it, you know right away that's something, you know, that's not typical. Or I guess where I'm from, it's not typical. We know right away that that is something special.

Nick Bayne (32:58.236)
Yeah, it's not that, again, it's not a thick, bone-white, rinded, what we think of as these kind of like modern brie's that I don't think necessarily has much bearing on a history of French brie at all. It's absolutely to a recipe and to a brie-inspired recipe, but for me is a bit of a different animal. This is more...

a cheese that embraces the tradition of that original style of cheese making where again you get that good breakdown, you get kind of funkiness coming off of there, you get a slightly ammonia aroma when it's really nice and ripe but it also doesn't go again into that sort of bitter and aggressive territory, it just gets more complex and more complex and gooier and

This cheese, when we have it on the front of our counter, we have to put marble blocks along these two open cells just to keep it from cascading, especially when it's really nice and ripe. It's a joy to work with.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (33:59.402)
That's a great point too, because I do feel like a lot of modern day bries the separation happens and it's so contrasting where the inside is such a thick clump of cheese and the, you know, you have the cream line is so obvious. Whereas I find with the Baron Bigod that whole thing just kind of absorbs into itself and just becomes one piece of cheese more or less as, know, obviously it's layers and different textures, but it's not so obvious. It's not so.

starkly different.

Nick Bayne (34:30.91)
Yeah, it's different approaches to cheese making. It's different ideas of cheese making. I'm not going to go around and say this one's right and this one's wrong because first of all, I'm a cheese monger, not a cheese maker. That is not my place. But they are different approaches. Yeah, exactly. But they are different approaches to making a cheese that's inspired from the same ancestor.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (34:46.215)
I'm with you, I'm so with you. There's room for all cheese.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (34:59.677)
I love that. So you've touched upon a couple different nuances of the cheese, but should we dive in sniff a piece, try a piece, see what we're working with here?

Nick Bayne (35:08.25)
Sure, absolutely. I'm going to cut myself a little piece here. I hope you don't mind.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (35:12.913)
No, please do.

Nick Bayne (35:17.01)
normally wouldn't do this during working hours and I'm not going to go touch that again after this but I am going to enjoy this right here. If you give this cheese a little sniff there, know classically what you're going to get with a Bloomy Rinded cheese like this is that kind of supermarket mushroom aisle thing and that absolutely has that going on a very clean fungal aroma but

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (35:21.289)
I'm sure you earned it after a long day.

Nick Bayne (35:42.877)
On top of that, there is the smallest hint of ammonia, which is good. That means that there's breakdown going on. That means there's ripening going on. What I really like about Baron is there's a slightly kind of yeasty floral thing there as well. And I think that's probably from the initial geotrichum driving, but also just unique to this cheese's floria itself. And then the flavor behind that, if we try some.

First of all, texture. my god, that's beautiful. That rind is so nice and thin, just like dryness. Breaks down immediately, doesn't get sticky on the tooth.

Nick Bayne (36:23.695)
flavor. Again we have a slight acidity there which is beautiful. Cultured butter.

of a meaty thing going on in this particular one too almost like a nice sort of crispy bacon sort of darkness to it garlicky for sure like a roast garlicky character to that a little bit of that classic roasted broccoli kind of brassica thing going on

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (36:44.269)
. you

Nick Bayne (36:54.302)
And just an even sort of cream finish to the cheese there, like fresh cultured cream just coming through there on the finish and lingering. The texture is beautiful, really, really soft and buttery. That's a gorgeous cheese. I could eat a lot of that cheese.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (37:10.889)
Do you know how old that wheel is specifically is that you're eating?

Nick Bayne (37:16.018)
That wheel specifically, that was made, I can tell you right now actually, give me a moment.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (37:21.928)
Yeah.

Nick Bayne (37:26.15)
So this particular one, let's see, you.

Nick Bayne (37:34.494)
That was made on October 11th.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (37:40.937)
Fresh!

I love that. do you find, guess these cheeses don't really age more than 60, 90 days or so? I mean, they're pasteurized, they don't have any kind of, well, time limit. Again, you're in England, so that rule might not even apply, obviously.

Nick Bayne (37:56.233)
Yeah, but know, Brie is meant to be eaten as this younger cheese and you're also meant to get in when it's a little bit younger, ideally under ripe and you can slightly, and can ripen it up a little bit more, which we make sure to do.

get it in at our headquarters and it goes into our cheese rooms. And then here at the shop when we get it, we also make sure to take it out of its box, turn it, stack it, make sure it's in optimal conditions to slowly ripen up a little bit more so by the time someone gets a taste of it, it is at the right point rather than anything too early and certainly nothing over ripe. So, yeah, think right now it's at...

Nick Bayne (38:41.726)
Is that about 50 days right now? Yeah, exactly. I'd say that's a pretty sweet spot for it. That's also why raw milk brie de meaux is not possible in the United States. And raw milk brie's of this style are not possible. Because ideally, they get to that beautiful point of early ripeness before that 60-day limit. Once you get to 60 days, you're going to have a very short time to be able to sell that raw milk cheese.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (38:43.773)
Yeah, I think so, almost exactly.

Nick Bayne (39:10.462)
it's not meant to be had in the majority at that point. So that's why we have all this pasteurized brie in the US, because really it's meant to be a younger cheese.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (39:23.165)
Right, I find that Andy Hatch with his Rush Creek Reserve dances on the fine line of that 60 day and being able to send it out as soon as he's able but without it arriving, you not too overripe and if sometimes it sits at the cheese shop and you know, things of that nature. So it is a very careful, careful line to walk when it comes to unpasteurized.

Nick Bayne (39:42.143)
It absolutely does. I love Rush Creek. we are similar. this time of year, those are some of my favorite cheeses in the world. you do have to get them out there really quick. And they do break down into a puddle of goo really quickly. And you just have to have them, which is part of the problem. But when we get Vacheron Mont D'Or here, it's a little bit younger than that because we're evil too.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (39:47.389)
Me too.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (39:57.523)
Yeah.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (40:08.071)
Right, right, and that I think makes the difference.

Nick Bayne (40:11.154)
And it's also interesting, with cheeses like that, my experience of them as a cheesemonger in the US, with the raw milk ones certainly, was of them being much more potent and powerful. And once I moved out here, there was a bit less of that. I got to start enjoying them in earlier ages. When we were able to bring raw cow's milk cheeses in, for example, the Epoisse we carry from Gaugry.

one of the only two last raw milk Epoisses that are left, we would bring in at a younger age. So suddenly, instead of dealing with a puddle that's just robust and slaps you in the face, you actually have this wonderful kind of bouncy, funky, but structured cheese that will break down into that eventually, but is not what we would expect of that kind of cheese in the States. Similar with some really lovely raw goat's milk cheeses. You all get the pasteurized versions of a lot of those.

cheeses for example, but we're able to have the raw milk versions of those. And so when you have those young, when it's still a really snowy paste with the thinnest possible rind before it's really starting to break down, you suddenly get these beautiful subtleties out of the cheese that I wasn't aware they could have until I moved out here. And they become quite special. And not to say that there's anything wrong with the pasteurized versions, there are some really great pasteurized goat's milk cheeses in the US, both made domestically and imported, but...

There is a difference. There's a difference.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (41:39.365)
No, you're absolutely right. I remember one of the first cheese shops in France I ever went into, they kept suggesting the Brie and I was looking at my husband, kind of rolling my eyes. I know about cheese. Don't push Brie on me. There's so many more special cheeses. And by day four, I caved and had the Brie and thought to myself, why did I not try this on day one? It's so different than what we're having in these states. And to your point, it's so special and unique. And even though there is something similar or close, it's just, you know, it's not the same.

Nick Bayne (41:57.884)
Okay.

Nick Bayne (42:09.566)
Exactly.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (42:09.576)
But no cheese is the same. You could have the exact same recipe, couple different cheese makers. know Cornerstone recently did something of that sort and each cheese maker is following the same recipe but using the milk native to their land and you've got something totally different. So we love to see that. We love the variation of all that.

Nick Bayne (42:26.59)
I think Peter Dixon's cornerstone project, I think was one of the best possible examples of seeing something like that. You can also see, for example, if you were to travel in Switzerland, different Gruyere makers within the five different cantons where you can make Gruyere, they'll be working to more or less the same recipe, but each one's gonna taste different based on the different milks, based on the different cheese maker, based on the different brine each one

uses, you can find the same thing with, well, similar thing with a lot of the really beautiful cloth-bound cheddars we had here at Somerset, where there are very similar recipes, but the smallest differences make huge, huge wide differences in results at the end. Cheese making is a very individualistic thing.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (43:15.773)
And yet we're all using the same category of ingredients. So to me that always blows my mind. Four ingredients and just an unlimited world of possibilities. I love that. That's what brought me to cheese, I think, was just being able to taste so many different things, but at the end of the day, all the same stuff, more or less, right?

Nick Bayne (43:35.069)
I think it's amazing that the smallest iterations can yield massively wildly different results and that those iterations can be within the same cheese over the course of a year. Changes in lactation, changes in diet, changes in the weather. Every little element affects something. I think that's super cool.

I think it's cool that it's been that way for the last 7,000 years or so with cheese making. There's always been some sort of difference. I love it.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (44:00.967)
Me too.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (44:11.624)
Me too. And I also find even with places like Jasper Hill and whatnot infiltrating the soil itself so that certain grasses and different plants can grow, which the cow ingests and it just you can, yeah, from top to bottom change just a tiny little variation of something and just, yeah, yield a completely different result. That is, yeah.

Nick Bayne (44:30.312)
Here in the UK, we've seen a real growth in renewable farming and sustainable farming and really trying to make sure that plants that want to grow aren't kept from growing as opposed to growing...

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (44:38.195)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Bayne (44:48.488)
very very specific crops to feed specific things you know to have your nitrogen fixers and your stuff that holds it to the soil and your specific herbal lays more cheese makers are well at least more dairy farmers are going

back to letting the land do a little bit more of what it's supposed to do, giving it a more diversified diet. Also, maybe moving to more heritage breeds of cows or breeds of cows that are not the whole style, the ones that are meant for the land, more dairy short ones, for example. Certainly in terms of stewardship of the land, Johnny Crickmore and Dulcey, his wife, and really everyone who worked for Fen Farm have been...

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (45:11.901)
Yeah.

Nick Bayne (45:34.633)
really, really integral in that movement. They work heavily on farming sustainability, on energy sustainability, on making low impact into the land itself, on really trying to push the idea that dairy farming is not simply trying to get a milk out of an animal, but it is actually land stewardship. The more you take care of your land, the more you're taking care of the cow.

take care of the cow, the better milk you have.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (46:09.993)
Happy cows make happy cheese. I will stand on that hill.

Nick Bayne (46:12.19)
I

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (46:15.466)
I totally agree with that. But before we finish off, I just want to know since to me this type of cheese feels so festive for the holiday season, what are we pairing this with? And you can't say honey, I feel like that's a cop out.

Nick Bayne (46:32.2)
No, I agree. Honey actually is a cop out And to be honest, I think there's a lot of honey, other than some very delicate ones, that would overwhelm this cheese a little bit. Because it's not high in salt. A little saltier than Brie de Meux but I wouldn't call it directly salty cheese. You don't need something that sweet to balance it out. I think...

for me for a fruit pairing this time of year means all these wonderful pears. I love a really crisp Asian pear with this. Some of the Japanese pear varieties are quite good. The really crunchy ones delicate but also just your really classic English orchard pear will go wonderfully with that and I think that's delicate enough to balance on that.

I do enjoy a persimmon here and there with it as well, which is kind of nice for this time of year. This cheese also does wonderfully with toasted hazelnuts, I find. And I know that's a really classic thing, it's fairly simple, but what I love is that the fat of the nut kind of meets the fat of the cheese, and then those toasty notes go right over the top.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (47:19.455)
Ooh.

Nick Bayne (47:39.775)
vegetal notes you get in the cheese. So almost tastes like you've roasted some broccoli with some hazelnuts in there and I think that that's really gorgeous. In terms of beverage, I think this cheese is a very natural pairing for a good full-bodied white of some sort. Nothing with too much acidity, gentle. You could go for a Viognier, something like that.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (47:49.866)
You You

Nick Bayne (48:06.458)
I actually think if you want something a little bit different for the beverage, two different ways you can go with Baron Bigod are either a dry mead, and I know you said no honey, but...

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (48:18.716)
If you drink it, it's different.

Nick Bayne (48:20.302)
Exactly and a fermented honey, a dry meat maybe one that's slightly sparkling Absolutely gorgeous. Don't go for anything sweet with that again. That won't quite work with the cheese, but with those really just nice Aromatics off of that matches with this and the dry Almost whiny flavor of that will go wonderfully for non-alcoholic I Really really like a green tea with Baron Bigod

It is beautiful. Ideally a jasmine. I think jasmine green teas are really gorgeous. Again, it's sort of the aromatics of that, meeting the aromatics of the cheese and then something with that very, very slight tannic structure of the green tea and the sort of herbal, vegetal notes mixing with the cheese's vegetal notes. And again, over the top, I think some of the more sweet aromatics of the tea will come out there.

cold nights like we're getting here. As you can see I'm in a hat right now because I'm in a freezing cold cheese shop after hours and there's nothing more that I would like with this little piece of Baron Bigod that I have here than a nice steaming hot cup of green tea. I think that would be wonderful. And of course...

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (49:24.713)
you

Nick Bayne (49:38.939)
And of course, Fine Cheese Company crackers. How could you not? How could you not have a traditional, good, buttery British cracker to go with a cheese like this? Something simple. I think Bath Squares, the traditional cracker we have here in Bath, are wonderful for it. Every time we go to the Artisan Cheese Fair in Milton Mowbray every year, where the Artisan Cheese Awards are held, we give Fen Farm a bunch of boxes of the Bath Squares to sample their cheese on, because they just work.

buttery cracker, nice thick structure, nice gooey cheese that it'll hold together on? I mean how can you ask for better than that, really?

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (50:17.398)
No, I completely agree and I also feel like this cheese doesn't need much. It's totally great by itself or like you said just on a cracker with a slice of pear. It doesn't need you know all the bells and whistles and jams and drizzles. It just really speaks for itself.

Nick Bayne (50:33.726)
I like simple pairings with the cheese. That said, there's also the tiny version of this cheese, the baby baby bag 250 grams and were you not to enjoy its ooey gooeyness by itself because it does break down a bit faster than the bigger wheels. You can pop that right into a baker and make a baked brie out of that basically. And this particular baked brie I think needs to be embraced with savory flavors not with sweets. So I go with the really kind of classic bit of rosemary.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (50:39.447)
how cute!

Nick Bayne (51:03.68)
a little bit of garlic, maybe a little bit of thyme over there, a little splash of something on the top, and it does wonderfully with this cheese. So it's not opposed to being used. think there's no such thing as a cheese too proud or too good to be used in making something, and this is no exception.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (51:23.165)
I love that. That sounds delightful because I'm so used to seeing those smaller rounds with the creme brulee torch or there's maple syrup and sliced almonds all over it. I saw that eye roll.

Nick Bayne (51:35.219)
There are some good versions of that. Listen, for me, flavor is king. If something tastes good, I love it. I love serving good food, and sometimes there are absolutely the right cheeses for that. I have so many wonderful and inspiring and really...

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (51:41.373)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Bayne (51:51.987)
daring friends in the American cheese mongering world who really push different flavors with things. I do that myself. I mean, I've done some really interesting variations on the baked camembert with some Chinese ingredients, for example, embracing kind of, again, savory mushroomy flavors out of something with like Lao Gan Ma, some cooking wine and things like that. And you can do that. But this cheese does not necessarily need that. I think there's so much to be had.

on its own and by itself that if you're going to add something to it just a little bit to heighten it.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (52:28.713)
Yeah, I love that tip. And I think probably works well for a couple other cheeses that are incredibly delicious by themselves. Think like a Gruyere or Comte. Like it's fun to do something else and try things. But at the end of the day, I like to call them my diet Coke cheese because all I really need is a plate of this cheese and a diet Coke and maybe some reruns of a TV show I love. I'm good to go for the night. It doesn't need any introduction. It doesn't need a ton of things. It's just, you know, to get the carbonation of the diet Coke to get it all back down.

And this definitely seems like one of those.

Nick Bayne (52:59.774)
little bit of BB, a little bit of DC, it's perfect.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (53:01.705)
That's my personal alphabet. Amazing. on this topic, just on the topic of cheese and your career in general, do you have any advice on people? find that my podcast is tailored to the consumer who wants to know more about cheese, maybe is a little intimidated by fancier cheeses. So do you have any advice when it comes to trying new things or getting your foot in the door or something along those lines?

Nick Bayne (53:30.558)
100 % and my advice comes from more or less 17 years of being behind the counter getting good food to hungry people but not always hungry people who know what they want and my advice is this if you're gonna try new cheese if you want to try new cheese if you're feeling a little adventurous or you just want to do something a little bit different find yourself

cheese counter that has someone even halfway knowledgeable behind it and ask questions. I am lucky that I'm a cheese monger so I get to have all these cheeses from a wonderful cheese shop here. Not everyone has a wonderful cheese shop by them. There are a lot of grocery stores or grocery stores with cheese sections but if you can even find one of those where there's an actual human being behind it

staffing it, who cares about the things they're putting out there, even the smallest questions, hey, I really like this, but I'd like to try something a little different. What would you suggest can go a long way? And if you can get to a good cheese counter, to an actual cheese munker, or a really good deli, or again, a gourmet sort of specialty food shop with a nice cheese section.

Just ask questions because there's going to be someone there who would love to make your day and find you the right thing. Because ultimately, that's what us cheese mongers are here for. We're here to do the detective work, make it easier for you.

ask you a couple things about what you want and find you the right piece of cheese for yourself. So don't worry, there is no such thing as a stupid question to ask a cheese monger. There is no such thing as being too new at cheeses. So you like just mozzarella and that's all you want? That's fine because there is something else that is the next step from that that can be found for you and that you might just love.

Nick Bayne (55:40.946)
That's fine.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (55:41.043)
I love that. No, that's good. And on that topic, what's your favorite cheese right now?

Nick Bayne (55:45.023)
Oh, don't. My favorite cheese right now. Listen, I have about a hundred and fourteen cheeses surrounding me right now. They are all my babies. I have made sure that each one of them is in this shop for a reason. And that's hard. How could you do that to me?

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (55:48.787)
you

You

you

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (56:03.209)
I know, I had to, I had to. I had to break the ice for the consumer, you know?

Nick Bayne (56:07.23)
So my favorite other than the Baron Bigod I'm trying right now?

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (56:11.593)
And it could be of the hour, you know, I feel like for me it changes weekly, but.

Nick Bayne (56:15.538)
You know what? I'm going to tell you that my favorite thing right now, I'm going to turn around and get it right here.

Nick Bayne (56:28.616)
So this cheese right here is called L'Etivaz

have a stunning gruyere behind me, right next to the L'Etivaz But next to that gruyere is also this cheese. Have you had L'Etivaz before? I'm going to tell you about it. Because I'm very partial to Alpine cheeses as a whole. From the Alps, from the Jura from the even further Alps, from the Italian Alps, I like the mountains. I like high elevation cheese. This particular one...

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (56:43.462)
No, I haven't.

Nick Bayne (57:01.598)
comes from a change in concept of cheese making. So nearly 100 years ago, not quite there, but nearly 100 years ago, a group of cheese makers who had been making Gruyere split off from production because for them, the only way that they should be making that cheese is in the old traditional way. And what does that mean? That means only during the summer months,

only from cows that are eating grass in the highest pastures, and in this case of the Vaudois Alps, and only made in the traditional manner. And that means copper kettles, wood fires. The milk is heated with wood fires, the curds are stirred over wood fires, that cheese is lifted as curds out of the vat with a cloth. It is put in the forms by hand, it is made by hand.

This is as old and traditional as it gets, that style of cheese making. And I love it because it's very seasonal, right? So you're going to get kind of a specific time of cheese making. The one we have in right now is about 15 months old right now. That means it was made in August.

And those August cheeses are off of the second growth of grasses on those Alps. So these are really high-nutrition plants. The cows are getting a great diet. And off the back of that second growth, I frequently find, and this is the case, to be fair, for comté, for summer milk gruyere, for a lot of Alpine cheeses. But off of that second growth, I get my

hit of aromatics. So this cheese right here, it smells like flowers, it smells a bit like honey, I get a bit of baking spice off of it, a little bit of funk from the rind, it is a washed rind cheese, but it's not, it's kind of mustier more than anything else.

Nick Bayne (59:03.006)
and a bit of pineapple, that classic tropical fruit that you find for those summer milk cheeses. And that pineapple continues initially into the flavor. You get that little bit of tropical fruit and then it just takes you on this journey of chicken stock, of savory, lingering, very slightly pecan, sort of like uncooked pecan, right? Nothing roasted, just that kind of nut fat going on there.

It's a little bit more delicate than our Gruyere, which is a bit more muscular. But I love that about it. It's just a mix of subtlety, of depth, and again, for me, really traditional summer cheese making. You'll sometimes find little flecks of embers throughout the paste because, again, this is being done over wood fires. They will skim all of that off it, all the ash off of the top of the milk. But every now and then little bits end up in there.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (59:58.716)
I love that. That sounds fantastic. I'm like, as you're talking, I'm just visualizing like beautiful mountains and lush pastures and yeah, I also love that they keep such a making aspect to it versus, you know, trying to keep it up and, you know, keeping the tradition.

Nick Bayne (59:59.069)
I thought that was glorious cheese.

Nick Bayne (01:00:18.046)
Although you know what? I'm going to extend this slightly because I know you'll run out of time for it or something but there is one other that's been really doing it for me and it's been doing it long time for me and lately the batches I've been having it have been something of pure magic. Would you like to know what that is?

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (01:00:28.776)
Okay.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (01:00:36.349)
I would, I would.

Nick Bayne (01:00:42.514)
That's this. Recognize it?

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (01:00:45.129)
I don't think so, hold it closer.

No, what is that?

Nick Bayne (01:00:50.268)
That is Red Leicester and that is the Sparkenhoe Red Leicester

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (01:00:53.577)
Nick Bayne (01:00:55.326)
This is cheese I hold near and dear to my heart. is one of the first artisan British cheeses I really fell in love with. I fell in love with that during grad school. I used to get pieces from George Muse in Glasgow when I was studying in Scotland. I would snack on them. I would sometimes make them into toasties with marmite. It's the perfect cheese for this time of year. It's younger than its cousins from the South, but this beautiful Midlands cheese from the Clark family, still raw milk. This one's about nine months old.

into more regenerative pasturing and

I love the flavor of it. It just finished top 14 at the World Cheese Awards actually. won best artist in cheese. And well deserved. It's just balanced. get this kind of chestnut sweetness and again slight nuttiness to it. A lovely kind of multi quality, gentle acidity. Slightly grassy, slightly musty in aroma. It's just lovely. And it's been doing it for me for the past month or so. And I think it's going to keep really just hitting all the notes I love about the cheese for the next month.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (01:01:35.387)
Awesome.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (01:01:59.869)
You know, I have a confession about that cheese. The last time I bought it about probably a year and a half ago or so, I left it in the shopping bags. I thought I took everything out. I didn't find it until the next day and it was absolutely fine.

Nick Bayne (01:02:11.228)
Yeah, wouldn't recommend that, but I'm sure it was. I really love that.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (01:02:16.266)
It was just a mistake.

Amazing. Well, Nick, thank you so, so much. This has been not only educational, delicious, and just, I really think your acting background makes you such an enlightening, enthralling person to listen to. I'm like, shoot, you should be the one with the podcast.

Nick Bayne (01:02:33.2)
I always thought that. Well thank you for having me and of course if you're ever in Bath come visit me at the shop here on Walcott Street and for any of you listening from the UK come visit us here in Bath or come visit the Fine Cheese Company's website get some wonderful cheeses that we deliver across the entire company across the entire plate.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (01:02:57.533)
you

Nick Bayne (01:02:57.544)
Come get some wonderful cheeses that we deliver across the entire UK. We also export some fantastic British cheeses, including this one we were talking about to the US, so you can look out for those. again, thank you for having me. It's been such a pleasure. I love talking to people who love talking cheese.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (01:03:13.865)
Thank you. No, this is great. Honestly, maybe in another couple months or so, we'll pick another cheese and have you back on because this is, as someone who's still green in the cheese world, it's easy to follow and understand mentally all the different notes and pairings you have. I'm like, wow, yeah, I should try toasted hazelnuts with that. So it's just a fun, unique way to get to know the cheese better, get to know cheese shops better. This is something that we want to keep on encouraging. So thank you so much again.

Nick Bayne (01:03:42.833)
I'm down for it. hope we get to talk again soon.

Brittany Bisset The Bs Cheese (01:03:45.254)
Awesome.