Digital Days Out Sunday 12th April – 10 Facts you didn’t know about Cheese-making and Wensleydale Creamery!

1. Our smoked cheese is naturally smoked over oak chip for 24 hours to create a natural smoked flavour. You can tell a cheese has been naturally smoked by the lines on the surface of the cheese.

2. In 2013, our Yorkshire Wensleydale cheese achieved European Protected Food Name Status (PGI). Yorkshire Wensleydale is only made at Wensleydale Creamery at Hawes, in Wensleydale!

3. The Wensleydale Creamery sources its milk from 43 local family farms, 65% of which farmland classified as ‘Disadvantaged Areas’, typically hill farms with sheep & dairy cows.

4. 2019 marked the 30th Anniversary of Wallace & Gromit. It was Christmas Eve 1995 when we received a postcard saying it would be in our interests to tune in to watch ‘A Close Shave’ film being aired that evening, where we discovered Wallace’s love for Wensleydale cheese!

5. Cows are milked twice a day usually around 5am and again at 5pm every day of the year – even Christmas Day!

6. ‘Orange’ cheese gets its colour from a natural colour called annatto. Not from cows producing orange milk!

7. The average herd size of farms supplying Wensleydale Creamery is half that of the national average

8. We’re custodians of a tradition, with Yorkshire Wensleydale having been handcrafted in our area for 1000 years. Skill and knowledge have been passed down through the ages and still inform how we make Yorkshire Wensleydale cheese today.

9. Our farmer’s cows graze on lush wildflower-rich meadows. This helps to give the milk a distinctive flavour and exceptional quality.

10. Green energy: Our whey permeate, a by-product of our cheese-making process is now being turned into biogas to will in turn, produce 10,000 MWh of thermal power, enough to heat 800 homes per year!