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#52: Dovevale Blue

We’ve spent 2018 exploring some exciting new cheesemakers: Leicestershire Handmade, Sheffield Cheesemasters and Olianas. This week, we return much closer to home, with Dovevale Blue from Hartington Cheese. It’s a soft, creamy cheese with a mild blue flavour. The cheese is brine dipped, instead of being dry-salted, and … hang on, haven’t we heard this all before?

Well.

Protected Designation of Origin (P.D.O.) is a European initiative, offering protection to foodstuffs made in specific locations, by not allowing cheap knock-offs to be produced elsewhere. There’s a question as to what will happen when we leave the EU, with American manufacturers hoping to sell “Cornish” pasties (currently protected by P.D.O.) in the U.K. But that’s for another time.

There are eighteen cheeses with P.D.O. protection in the U.K., one of which is Dovedale. DoveDale. Made by the Staffordshire Cheese Co. Ah, so Hartington’s DoveVale must be one of those cheap knock-offs? In fact, Hartington Creamery was making Dovedale back in 2007, when the P.D.O. was registered. The creamery closed in 2009, and by the time cheesemaking resumed in Hartington in 2014, it was being made down the road. But there’s nothing to stop Hartington calling their new cheese Dovedale too; after all, there are seven makers of Blue Stilton, which is also a protected name.

So I wonder why Dovevale isn’t Dovedale? Answers on a postcard. Postmarked “Brussels”.

Stepping Stones in Dovedale
Stepping Stones in Dovevale