Crozier Blue is a recent development by J & L Grubb Ltd., who have had a long experience of Blue Cheese Making. This Farmhouse Cheese is produced from the milk of a flock of sheep recently established on the limestone pasturelands near Cashel, Co. Tipperary. The cheese is made from pasteurized milk, vegetarian rennet and is available seasonally. Even though only recently launched, it is proving popular in specialty outlets and up-market supermarkets in Ireland, England and Scotland due to its mild flavor and softer texture.
Crozier Blue is slow to mature and can be eaten when young and crumbly or for a subtle flavor and a creamier texture it best kept to mature for at least four months in a refrigerator. It should always be kept wrapped except before serving when it should be allowed to warm up and breathe for an hour at room temperature.
Crozier Blue is a hand made sheep’s cheese, which is renowned for its very special qualities. The name comes from a play of words between the bishop’s crook (for the farm is within a half a mile of Cashel) and the shepherd’s crook. Throughout the milking season the ewes are grass fed grazing the fertile grasslands of Tipperary producing the distinctively flavored milk that gives Crozier a smooth buttery texture, a mild almost sweet flavor balanced by salt and penicillin culture. It is a cheese that is entirely itself and like all good Irish farmhouse cheeses a blend of the quality of the flock, the nature of the grazing and the personality of the cheese makers.
Henry and Louis Clifton Browne, of Crozier Dairy Products, are nephews of Louis and Jane Grubb of Cashel Blue. The two farms are located close to one another with the Clifton Brownes specializing in sheep and the Grubbs in dairy cows. Although separate companies the family cheese making operation is inter-linked. Louis and Henry are responsible for the sheep flock, milk production, quality control and sales of Crozier Blue and their company contracts Jane and Louis Grubb to process the milk into finished cheese.
The story of Crozier Blue began in 1993 when Henry, using the milk from six sheep, began making a sheep’s milk blue cheese. Over the next five years, the recipe was perfected and the flock improved by importing milking Friesian ewes from Britain building up a specialized milking flock. By 1999 the project became commercial reality and had begun winning specialist cheese-making awards. The year 2003 was an amazingly successful year with Crozier Blue winning gold medals at both the British Cheese awards and World Cheese awards.
Henry and Louis Clifton Browne
Since 1999, the output of Crozier Blue has grown steadily from one ton a year to twelve tons in 2004. Now with 250 milking sheep in their flock, they aim to produce 15 tons in the coming year. This will allow further development of new markets established last year in America and Australia. It’s also exported to the UK, Denmark, Germany, France and Japan. Distributed in Ireland through pretty well all the top wholesalers it’s widely available and on the menu in many in leading restaurants, nation-wide it is stocked in Superquinn, all around the country in specialist shops like Sheridans, Mortons, McGills, Wrights, Cavistons, Iagos and The Pigs Back and at Farmers Markets through Fiona Burke and Silke Croppe.
