Renegade Monk Cheese

Description

A soft, blue, organic cow’s cheese, drunkenly washed in ale.

Renegade Monk is a multi-award winning organic cheese.  It was crowned Supreme Champion, Best British Cheese at the inaugural Virtual Cheese Awards 2020. 

Using artisan techniques on a newly developed recipe, Renegade Monk is made from organic, pasteurised cow’s milk while the set curd is then hand washed in organic ale every few days as the cheese matures. Maturation takes no more than four weeks.  

Cheesemaker, Marcus Fergusson, deliberately created a cheese of a style not traditionally found in Britain – but rather a cheese inspired by a range of Continental cheeses. It is most often compared to an Epoisses, but with an added hint of (occasionally visible) blue (which the french would never do – it makes a volatile cheese being matured from the outside with the organic ale, and from the inside with the blue culture – so when it’s good, it’s second to none….) 

Renegade Monk features in Ned Palmer’s authoritative new book, A Cheesemonger’s History of the British Isles, where it was described as “Postmodern par excellence”. We think this is because this cheese is a unique hybrid, different to anything that has come before it.  

We love that Renegade Monk won Gold at the Mondial du Fromage Tours in 2021 – the ultimate cheese competition, run by French cheesemongers.  

Cheese comes only in 220g maple box (yay, totally compostable) and unfortunately has to be shrink wrapped in single use plastic (boo) – if you have any alternative solutions to keeping cheeses nice and fresh, whilst being able to view them too, please let us know – there needs to be some serious innovation in this area.  So forgive this small lapse of sustainability.  

Recommended Retail Price is £8-12 depending on where you buy your cheese (hello Mayfair).  

If you want to buy several of these cheeses we recommend buying four or more units (across all our cheeses and T shirts) which then we can post to you for £40 including P&P.   Otherwise the postage is too onerous as it costs us £7.80 for next day delivery using DHL before we’ve packed in an insulated box, with an ice pack etc.