Blaenafon Cheddar Company and Easter Bonnets – April meeting

Our speaker at the April meeting was Susan of the Blaenafon Cheddar Company. The company began 2006 and has gradually grown over time. On the day they opened customers were queuing in the street. They completely sold out that Christmas, and Susan laughingly told us that they had had to buy the cheese for their own use from a supermarket!

Locally produced milk is transported to North Wales where it is pasteurised and turned into basic cheddar cheese. This then returns to them in Blaenafon, South Wales and they process it into the varieties of specialist cheeses they produce. All the ingredients that are added to process the cheese are natural. For example, the cheeses that contain alcohol, the beer or sparkling wine come out of a bottle, and apple and strawberry are fresh fruits – they are not synthetic flavourings. After processing, the cheese is extruded into long sausage shapes and chilled. Then it is sliced into the familiar round shape of Blaenafon cheeses, waxed, chilled, given a second layer of wax and hand labelled. Each batch is micro-tested and so far they have had no failures and received no complaints. Their cheeses have won a number of awards.

Blaenafon Cheese generously gave a platter of cheese to each table for members to sample. The samples were: Oak Smoked, 1868 Lion Hotel, Strawberry and Prosceco, Bara Brith, Taffy Apple, Capel Newydd, Cymru Crunch, Pwll Ddu, and Dragon's Breath. It was quite a lot of cheese with a whole range of flavours. After the presentation and sampling, members were able to purchase cheeses.

After the presentation, Susan kindly judged the Easter bonnet competition.