Dorset Blue Vinney cheese

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Dorset blue vinney (frequently spelled "vinny") is a traditional blue cheese made in Dorset, England, from skimmed cows' milk. It is a hard, crumbly cheese. "Vinney" is a local Dorset term related to the obsolete word "vinew", which means to become mouldy. Another explanation has it that "vinny" is a corruption of "veiny", referring to the blue veins running throughout the cheese.

While the cheese was a common farmhouse cheese in Dorset for hundreds of years, production dried up around 1960 and the cheese became extinct. However, in the 1980s Woodbridge Farm in Dorset revived the old recipe and is now producing the cheese again.

In his poem Praise O' Do'set^[1] the Dorset poet William Barnes asks,

Woont ye have brown bread a-put ye,

An' some vinny cheese a-cut ye?

It is often made from unpasteurised milk. This is considered healthy by some and risky by others due to the potential for tuberculosis from infected cows passing into the milk. It has a strong taste and smell.

[edit] Trivia

'Dorset Blue Vinney' is one of the cheeses named in the 'Cheese Shop' sketch by the British comedy group Monty Python. The store, obviously, does not have it available.

[edit] References