Cheese, Lanark-Style

⚠ UNTESTED. A briefing.

A Lanark-style is a Scottish sheep’s-milk blue — the cheese that, more than any other in this collection, has a court case attached to it.

⭐⭐ In the mid-1990s the local authority moved to condemn and destroy Lanark Blue over Listeria, and its maker, Humphrey Errington, fought them — and won. It became a landmark moment for raw-milk cheese in Britain: a small producer contesting a destruction order in court, and the order being overturned.

⚠ I am going to be careful about the details rather than dramatic, because this is the sort of story that acquires embellishment. What is not in dispute is that the challenge was made, that it succeeded, and that it is still cited whenever British raw-milk cheese comes under pressure. Errington’s operation faced a second, separate action two decades later, which is a reminder that winning once does not settle the question.

🔴 And it matters to this section’s argument. Everywhere else the raw-milk fights are between regulators and designations — six bodies reaching six incompatible conclusions. This is the version where it lands on one farm, one maker, and a sheriff court.

Ingredients

• 3 gallons sheep’s milk if you can get it, otherwise whole cow’s milk (not ultra-pasteurised)
• 3/8 tsp mesophilic culture
• 1/16 tsp Penicillium roqueforti
• 3/4 tsp calcium chloride solution, if the milk is shop-bought
• 3/4 tsp liquid rennet, single strength, diluted in 1/4 cup cool unchlorinated water
• 3 Tbsp fine salt
• 1 straight-sided mould, about 6 inches across
• A sanitised skewer or a blue needle
• Foil for wrapping

Directions

Key ingredients

Salt

1. Warm the milk to 86 F / 30 C. ⚠ Sheep milk sets faster and firmer than cow’s — watch the flocculation, not the clock.

Mesophilic culture and a pinch of P. roqueforti, ripen 60-90 minutes.

Rennet at a flocculation multiplier of about 4, cut to 3/4 inch, stir minimally, no cook.

1. Drain and ladle into the mould unpressed, flipping often over 24 hours at 65 F.

Dry-salt at about 3% over two or three days.

1. Rest 1-2 weeks at 50-55 F, 90-95% RH, wiping the rind.
2. Needle at 7-14 days, 30-50 holes per face.
3. Age 3 to 4 months. Sheep’s milk gives a denser, whiter, richer paste than a cow’s-milk blue and takes the salt well. Foil when the veining is where you want it.
4. 🔴 A word about raw milk, since it is the point of this cheese. Making a raw-milk blue at home is a decision to take deliberately and with the arguments in front of you, not by default. Sanitation and safety covers the general case, and /cheese/history/raw-milk-wars/ covers the regulatory one. This recipe works with pasteurised milk — it will be a slightly different, slightly quieter cheese, and that is a legitimate choice rather than a compromise.

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t 🔴 UNTESTED. ⚠ This is not Lanark Blue, which is a specific farmhouse cheese made in South Lanarkshire. This is a Lanark-style sheep’s-milk blue.

⭐⭐ The case, stated carefully In the mid-1990s Lanark Blue was the subject of a condemnation order over Listeria, which its maker Humphrey Errington challenged in court and defeated. It is repeatedly cited as a turning point for British raw-milk cheese, and it is one of very few instances of a small producer successfully contesting a destruction order.

⚠ I have deliberately not printed dates, sample counts or the precise procedural history, because accounts differ in detail and I have not read the judgment. The shape of the story is solid; the specifics are the part that gets embroidered in retelling, and this collection’s policy is to say what survives rather than what makes the better paragraph. ⚠ A separate action against the same producer two decades later is also well documented — winning once did not settle it.

🔴 Everything here is inverted on purpose Penicillium roqueforti is aerobic. Add it to the milk and it will sit in the finished wheel doing nothing at all, because a well-made cheese has no oxygen in it.

So a blue is built to give it some, in two stages. A loose, open, badly-knit curd — minimal cutting, gentle stirring, no press or a token one — leaving a body full of tiny voids. And then the needles, weeks later: dozens of channels driven through the wheel, air reaches the interior, the dormant mould wakes up and grows along those channels.

⭐ That is why the veining follows lines rather than being random. Those blue-green streaks are a map of where the needles went. In any other family an open curd is a defect with a name; here it is the specification.

Why blues are dry-salted rather than brined ⭐ It is structural, not traditional. A brine adds water to the rind and closes the surface; heavy dry salting draws moisture OUT and leaves a surface that can still breathe. On a high-moisture, deliberately open cheese both of those matter — and heavy salt is also one of your two brakes on a mould that would otherwise run away with the wheel.

Sheep’s milk, again As with a Roquefort-style, the milk is not interchangeable. Sheep milk carries more fat and protein, yields more cheese, and sets faster and firmer. A cow’s-milk version is a good blue and a different one.

⚠ And it will get into everything else P. roqueforti produces enormous numbers of spores and they travel. Once blue is aging in a small shared space, expect to find it colonising the rinds of things that were never meant to be blue. The serious answer is a separate space; the practical home answers are to run blue in batches and clean thoroughly afterwards, or to keep the wheels in their own sealed container inside the cave. Worth knowing before you start rather than after — particularly if, like me, you have one cave and one fridge and everything shares.

Read alongside /cheese/makes/blue-and-mold-ripened/ and /cheese/history/raw-milk-wars/ on the site.