Susannah Stone was the trail-blazing Highland cheesemaker who made history by reviving the crofter's crowdie in the 1960s.
Her early attempts, she admitted later, were made with surplus cow's milk curds hung up to dry in a pillow slip over the family bath. It was a practical solution to a farming problem at a time when she had no ambition to make cheesse as a career. The Milk Marketing Board bought everyone's milk and held the cheesmaking monopoly. A farmer's wife making her own cheese was unheard of.
Now, more than forty years on, her son Rory Stone has made his own reputation with cheese. He follows in the spirit of his mother's success, creating new cheeses with character: his latest is Morangie brie.
Cheesemaking is never without its problems and at first his new brie turned out "something with the texture of an ice hockey puck and the flavour of a barium meal," says Stone.
All that is sorted now, to the extent that it won Best Scottish Cheese at this year's British Cheese Awards, and Gold Medal for top British brie. The transformation has as much to do with the fine quality milk, from Ayrshire and Friesian cows, as the know-how from a French brie expert - and the Stone trail-blazing tradition.
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Highland Fine Cheeses, Blairliath Farm, Shore Road , Tain, 01862 892034 www.hf-cheeses.com