Crystalline and powerful, Doddington Cheese is made using a hybrid of cheese-making techniques – it has echoes of Parmesan, Cheddar and aged Gouda.

Using fresh milk straight from the family’s cows, the cheese is handmade everyday on the Doddington farm.  It is then aged for over a year to allow the strength and crystalline nature to develop, akin to good aged Gouda.  When matured it develops a sweetness with a sharp savoury finish.

Made by Maggie Maxwell in Wooler, Northumberland, England.

Doddington Farm is run by the Maxwell family.  In the 1950s the family moved from their tenanted farm in west Scotland and bought from the Admiralty the tenancy of the small Doddington Farm, situated on a rural outcrop of England overlooked by the Cheviot Hills.  In the late 1980s the family’s next generation took over running the farm and soon started experimenting with cheese-making.

Nowadays one Maxwell brother, Bob, looks after their 400 Ayrshire, Friesian and Normandy cows, milking them every morning.

The fresh milk is piped across the yard to their dairy each morning and, still warm, some is turned into ice-cream by another brother, Neil, and his wife Jackie, and the rest is used by their sister, Maggie, to make a range of cheeses – ‘Doddington’ and ‘Admiral Collingwood’ perhaps being the most famous.

Doddington originally started out as a Red Leicester recipe (without the colourant) but soon took influences from Cheddar and Parmesan, and after several visits from Dutch agricultural students (who get the ferry over to nearby Tynemouth port), it took on Gouda characteristics too.  Always aged for over a year it has a real depth of flavour!