Milleens Cheese-History

"When Veronica first started making this cheese in 1976 it is sure she did not realize that twenty five years later it would be known as the cheese where the story of modern Irish farmhouse cheese making begins. Milleens is an artisan food, a washed rind cheese with a soft paste. It has a mottled peach and sometimes fiery orange washed rind and within is a paste that goes from semi-firm to spilling cream. The flavor is a complex mix of delicate herbs along with a spicy tang. Available in 1.5kg and 200g rounds, the smaller known as 'dotes'."

The origin of the initial concept is fading in the mists of time. Hunger and shame. There was nothing to eat: nothing interesting. The old shop in Castletownbere with its saucepans and shovels and Goulding's Manures clock wagging away the time, and smoked hams hanging from hooks in the ceiling and huge truckles of cheddar on the wooden counter with their mouldy bandages the crumbs of the cheese strewn around, scrumptious, tempting, melt-in-the-mouth crumbs which you could nibble at as you queued to be served, with your message list. And then she would cut a fine big chunk, golden or white and what I missed the most is the way it crumbled. So they closed it and gutted it and extended it and re-opened it. Enter the trolley. Spotless, sterile, pre-packed portions sweating in their plastic. Tidy piles. Electronic scales. Keep moving. Don't block the aisles. No idle chatter. Big brother is watching you. Don't ask for credit. Oh Boy!

And then one day in a different shop that jolly French pair of geriatrics asking for the local cheese and being given Calvita.

And then we bought a farm and a cow. Her name was Brisket and she only had one horn. She lost the other one gadding down a hill. tail-waving, full of the joys of Spring. Her brakes must have failed. We had to put Stockholm tar on the hole right through the hot Summer. And all the milk she had. At least three gallons a day. Wonder of wonders and what to do with it all. And then remembering those marvelous cheddars. So for two years I made cheddars. They were never as good as the ones in Castletownbere had been but they were infinitely better than the sweaty vac-packed bits.
Very little control at first but each failed batch spurred me on to achieve, I was hooked. Once I had four little cheddars on a sunny windowsill outside, airing themselves and Prince, the dog, stole them and buried them in the garden. They were nasty and sour and over salted anyway. Those were the days.

So one day Norman said, 'Why don;t you try making a soft cheese for a change'. So I did. It was a quare hawk alright. Wild, weird, and wonderful. Never to be repeated. You can never step twice into the same stream. Now while this was all going on we had a mighty vegetable garden full of fresh spinach and courgette's and french beans, and little peas, and all the sorts of things you couldn't buy in a shop for love or money. And we would sell the superfluity to a friend who was a chef in a restaurant and took great pains with her ingredients. She would badger the fishermen for the pick of their catch and come on a Monday morning with her sacks to root through our treasure house of a garden for the freshest and the bestest. Now I was no mean cook myself and would have ready each Monday for her batches of yogurt, plain and choc-nut, quiches, game pies (Made with hare and cream - beautiful), pork pies, all adorned with pastry leaves and rosettes as light and delicious as you can imagine, and fish pies, and, my specialty, gateau St Honore - those were the days.

So there was this soft cheese beginning to run. We wrapped up about twelve ounces of it and away it went with the vegetables and the pies and all the other good things to Sneem and the Blue Bull restaurant where it made its debut. Not just any old debut, because, as luck would have it, guess who was having dinner there that very same night? Attracted no doubt by Annie's growing reputation and being a pal of the manager's, Declan Ryan of the Arbutus Lodge Hotel in Cork had ventured forth to sample the delights of Sneem and the greatest delight of them all just happened to be our humble cheese . The first, the one and only, Irish Farmhouse Cheese. At last, the real thing after so long. Rumor has it that there was a full eclipse of the Sun and earth tremors when the first Milleens was presented on an Irish cheese board.

The product had now been tested and launched. Its performance, post launch left nothing to be desired. The very next night Ms Myrtle Allen, accompanied no doubt by other family members, of Ballymaloe House, similarly engaged in testing the waters of Sneem, polished off the last sliver of the wonderful new cheese and was impressed by its greatness. And then began the second phase of research and development. Improvement.

For eight years, this was written in 1986, now we have devoted our energies to the continued improvement and development of Milleens cheese, and show no intention of stopping. The changes in the product have been gradual and subtle and in line with increases in production which are always kept in line with the growth in demand.

As the product developed so too has the packaging which is both simple and highly sophisticated. As Milleens must travel by both post and refrigerated transport a package had to be strong enough for the rigors of the postal system yet with sufficient ventilation to avail of the benefits of refrigeration where available. Our strong wooden boxes met these requirements. It was also thought necessary that the box serve as an attractive display for the cheese ensuring that the name Milleens was displayed prominently, and differentiating it from other products. It has been most successful in this area too and customers invariably display the cheese in the box. Very clever altogether. The boxes are made and stenciled here in our workshop by ourselves and members of the staff. Apart from growing and felling the timber all the phases of their manufacture take place at Milleens. They compare most favorably in price with any box on the market.

When Milleens was first made we knew enough about cheese making to write a slim volume, vast quantities of knowledge have since been ingested form all available sources form Scientific American to the Journals of Dairy Science and pamphlets from New Zealand on Bacteriophage. Grist to the mill. Making Milleens is no longer a slap-happy matter but has become a carefully controlled scientific process. thermometers have replaced elbows. Acidometers play their part now. But most of all milk quality is carefully monitored. Starters have long been recognized to have a most important influence on cheese flavor and quality, and are as well looked after as the crown jewels and to better effect.

Our hopes and ambition have grown too. This winter saw us making cheese for the first time ever. We now appreciate the benefits of an all-year round milk supply. We are in the process of obtaining a licence from the Department of Agriculture to purchase milk for cheese making and envisage growth in the future in order to meet the demands of the home market and that overseas. We have established a firm home base for Milleens which expands weekly. Like a healthily growing child we have no sooner completed one phase of expansion before it is time to begin another. Most exhilarating. Who would have ever thought it.

Milleens is no longer lonely as a cloud but forms a nucleus for the whole new industry in both farmhouse and, dare I say it, factory. A generation of new cheeses has developed in its wake. A dream is being realized. On first meeting with Declan Ryan. some eight years ago, we discussed the future and I confided in him a dream or ambition that in twenty years time Ireland would have a genuine regional cheese industry to be proud of. That local cheese would help stimulate a vast and prosperous parallel factory industry. Something is definitely happening. Something good and exiting and invigorating.

A day presumably will come when a plateau in terms of sales and production of Milleens will be reached, far way in the mists of time.

A serious market research study might well have contra-indicated embarking on making a cheese like Milleens for the Irish market. Which just goes to show, test marketing might well have had negative results. In those early days we were quite accustomed to hearing 'It'll never sell'.

The National Dairy Council's awards to the hotels and restaurants for cheese boards was undoubtedly a factor in our initial success. The fact that we still supply Milleens to our first and original customers, Annie Goulding, Declan Ryan, Myrtle Allen (Together with many more of course) points to the quality of the cheese. Anyone will try a product once out of simple curiosity but to keep buying it for he next eight years tells you something about the product. Milleens is no longer a curiosity. It is a necessary luxury.

We have supplied the Dorchester Hotel in London with two cheeses a week for over five years without fail. their cheese board is considered to be one of the greatest in the world. They have never once returned a cheese or made any complaint. Quite the contrary. We are proud of Milleens in terms of quality, consistent and orderly improvement, and perhaps above all the way in which it has contributed to the opening up of delicatessen counters in every corner of Ireland where heretofore it had been considered impossible.

Veronica Steele, 1986