Lancashire food revolution: Butlers Farmhouse cheeses

Lancashire Post

As part of our Lancashire food revolution series, we chat with 4th generation owner of Butlers Farmhouse Cheeses in Inglewhite, near Preston, about the area's special produce.

Transcript

00:00 There's absolutely a food revolution happening around Lancashire.

00:04 The thing that's sustained us as a business over, since 1932, has been a constant thirst

00:11 for innovation and keeping quality at the forefront of what we do.

00:16 So the lush pasture lands of Lancashire provide excellent milk.

00:20 We help to make that into fantastic cheese.

00:23 If you make a great quality product and people are putting it in their mouths, chances are

00:28 if it tastes good, they're going to keep coming back for more year after year and that's what

00:32 we like to think we're doing here.

00:34 We're sourcing all of our milk here from a 10 mile radius.

00:37 The majority comes from my uncle's farm across the road, but otherwise we're supporting six

00:42 dairy farms all the way across rural Lancashire.

00:46 And do you think being in Lancashire plays a part in the quality?

00:50 Being based in Lancashire, using milk from this kind of 10 mile radius from where we

00:53 are here at the dairy in Inglewight, makes a massive difference on the quality of the

00:58 cheese that we make.

00:59 Do you want to talk me through a few of the cheeses that we've got here?

01:02 Yeah, sure.

01:03 So we've got a cheese board here.

01:05 We'd like to say it's kind of the perfect British cheese board.

01:08 It's all here from rural Lancashire.

01:11 We've got a hard cheese, which is our Sunday best, an authentic Lancashire cheese, which

01:19 very much is the spine of a lot of people's cheese boards, a hard cheese, rich and savoury,

01:24 got a great tang to it.

01:26 Then we've got Blacksticks Blue, which is a luscious, rich blue cheese, super savoury,

01:35 really got those rich umami flavours.

01:38 And then we pair that with Buttermilk, which is our soft, camembert style cheese, which

01:47 again, to have a Lancashire maker that's able to do hard, soft and blue cheese all

01:53 in one dairy is really something that's quite unique.

01:56 And I think that's what's keeping the chefs and the restaurants coming back to us time

02:01 and time again, because when we started in 1932, my grandma developed this recipe in

02:08 1969, we were just making hard cheese.

02:12 We're taking these products now beyond Lancashire.

02:14 So you've got the products that are started in Lancashire, which is fantastic, but actually

02:19 the appeal of something like a Blacksticks or a Buttermilk goes beyond the Lancashire

02:24 borders and we are able to take that onto a national scale, which is really quite exciting.

02:28 And what do you think is happening in Lancashire at the moment with the food revolution?

02:31 Do you think there is a food revolution?

02:34 It started in COVID.

02:36 People started to wake up a little bit to the quality and the breadth of products that

02:42 they could get on their doorstep.

02:44 People were starting to think, how can I buy local?

02:46 How can I shop local?

02:48 Then we had the supply chain challenges in 2022 and people were again seeing bare shelves

02:55 and it was the local producers that they could continue to get those quality products from.

02:59 And so now, as we're starting to see a bit more of a cost of living conversation come

03:04 up, people are wanting to support those producers that have supported them for the last few

03:08 years and people are recognising that actually paying a little bit more for their food is

03:14 getting them an exponentially better product on their plate.

03:18 And that's the bit that I think is the exciting part for us moving forward with that food

03:22 revolution as you say.

03:24 People are recognising that products with purpose, quality and handmade, locality of

03:30 where something's come from, manufactured by people who actually care about what they're

03:34 doing is way better to put in your mouth.

03:38 And do you think family run businesses like yourselves that have been going on for so

03:42 long are making a name for Lancashire and putting Lancashire on the map in terms of

03:46 food?

03:47 The renaissance that we're seeing in terms of cheese but also in terms of people looking

03:52 for products with purpose means that we're putting more of a media spotlight than ever

03:58 before on these Lancashire producers and that's really exciting for me because ultimately

04:02 we can fill an entire restaurant's menu from starter all the way through to dessert with

04:08 product sourced in Lancashire.

04:10 But more importantly I think that media attention is starting to take these products beyond

04:14 the borders of Lancashire.

04:15 We're starting to see Lancashire products on a menu in London and people starting to

04:20 recognise that actually something like Black Sticks is a product that deserves to be on

04:25 a London cheese board not just a Lancashire cheese board and that's starting to really

04:30 help put Lancashire on the map from a tourism point of view as well.

04:34 Do you think with Lancashire being such a close knit community like in terms of your

04:38 uncle owning the farms, do you think that helps in terms of the quality?

04:43 That desire for honest manufacture, honest living, honest prices and good quality proper

04:51 food is what Lancashire's about and that's the ecosystem that we've got here so when

04:56 we're looking for milk and we're speaking to a local Lancashire farmer we know that

05:02 we're going to be talking about great quality milk with high welfare standards on the farms.

05:07 That's a given because that's in the DNA of people producing food in this area.

05:13 And what makes butlers so quality stand out so much above the rest?

05:18 I think our quality is about care, dedication, passion.

05:23 As budgets get tighter people want to put their money into things that matter and eating

05:29 good quality food is something that's accessible to the majority of us in one way or another

05:37 and shopping a little bit smarter, going direct to the producer, that actually gets you a

05:42 great bang for your buck.

05:44 We've got 100 people who are passionate beyond belief when it comes to Lancashire products

05:51 and if you've got a passion for something you're going to go the extra mile to find

05:55 a way to take that product in its best possible way all the way through to the end consumer

06:00 on their plate.

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