A Simple Guide to Scottish Island Cheeses

Why Island Cheese Tastes Different

Ask anyone who has stood on a Hebridean pier at dawn and they will tell you the air has a taste: salt, wet stone, a faint sweetness of grass. That same air, and the slow-growing pasture it blows across, is the reason Scottish island cheeses are worth planning a trip around. Small herds graze on machair and hill ground, often fewer than a hundred animals to a farm, and the milk changes with the seasons. Spring milk is thinner and brighter, perfect for soft cheese; autumn milk is richer and better suited to hard, aged wheels.

Most of these dairies are tiny. One or two people, a vat, a press, a cool room, and a van that goes to the ferry once a week. That scale is the whole point. You are not buying a commodity, you are buying a particular field, a particular summer.

The Cheeses to Look For

You do not need a long list. Five or six styles cover almost everything you will find on island shelves, and knowing them makes shopping far easier.

• A cloth-bound hard cheese. Cheddar-style, aged six to eighteen months, often with a nutty, slightly earthy finish. Look for a dry, grey-brown rind and a firm, crumbly paste. It is the backbone of any island board.
• A soft, bloomy-rinded cheese. Usually a summer make, with a mushroomy aroma and a creamy centre that runs when it is ripe. Buy it within a day or two of eating it; these do not travel well in a hot car.
• Crowdie. Scotland's own fresh cheese, soft and slightly sharp, traditionally served with oatmeal and a pinch of salt. Some versions are rolled in toasted oats or cracked pepper. Eat it within days, on oatcakes, with nothing else competing.
• A blue. Salty, sharp and veined, often firmer and more assertive than continental blues. Excellent with a slice of apple and a glass of something dark.
• A smoked cheese. Cold-smoked over oak or peat, which gives a deep, almost campfire note. A little goes a long way; treat it as a condiment rather than a main event.
• A ewe's milk hard cheese. Sweet, grassy and faintly lanolin-rich. Less common, so snap it up when you see it.

Packing the Perfect Island Cheeseboard

The kit matters as much as the cheese. Island weather does not negotiate, and a picnic that works in a sheltered glen will fail on an exposed headland. Build your bag around these six things and you will be fine anywhere.

• Oatcakes. Buy the rough, coarse ones with visible grain. They hold up to a hard cheese and do not shatter in a rucksack.
• Chutney. Beetroot and apple, or a dark caramelised onion. Something sharp and slightly sweet to cut through the fat.
• A flask of hot tea. Fill it at home with boiling water, warm the flask first, and brew it strong. Nothing else tastes as good on a cold bench above a bay.
• Butter and a small knife. Salted, wrapped in wax paper. A blunt knife with a wooden handle is safer in wind than anything clever.
• A cloth and a paper bag. The cloth doubles as a table and a windbreak for your hands. The bag takes the rinds home.
• An apple. One sharp, crisp apple per person, sliced at the last minute with the same knife.

Where to Eat It

Choose your spot with the wind in mind. A harbour wall is grand on a still day but brutal in a south-westerly; a dune slack behind the beach is almost always calmer and warmer. Headlands above a machair plain give you the view without the gale. If it is raining properly, and it will be, a wooden bench inside a ruined chapel or an old kirk yard wall makes a surprisingly good shelter.

Two practical notes. Midges arrive at dusk from June to August, so eat early or eat somewhere breezy. And keep your rinds and crumbs zipped away; island sheep are bold, and a ewe that has learned to associate rucksacks with oatcakes will follow you for miles.

Buying, Keeping and Getting It Home

Buy at the dairy gate where you can, or from the island shop or honesty box that stocks it. Ask when it was made, and ask how ripe it is now. A good hard cheese wants a cool, humid place; wrap it in wax paper rather than cling film, which suffocates it. Soft cheeses should be eaten within a few days of purchase, hard ones will happily keep for weeks.

For the journey home, bring a cool bag and a frozen bottle of water. Let hard cheese come up to room temperature for an hour before serving: the flavour opens up completely, and you will taste the summer it came from. Take the ferry, watch the island shrink behind you, and eat the last of the crowdie on deck with the remains of the oatcakes. It is the best possible end to a trip.