Friday 26 October 2012

Product Review: Cathedral City

Back in British Cheese Week, Cathedral City sent me a sample of their "Selections" (which actually don't seem to be on their website) to try. Selections are a bag of fourteen individually-wrapped snack-size portions of cheese, which apparently come in Mature, Extra Mature and a Variety pack. I was given the variety pack to try, which contains mature, extra mature and the Cathedral City flagship, the Vintage 20 cheddar.

Now, I like the extra mature. It's the best-tasting cheese our local corner shop sells, so we buy it fairly often when a cheese emergency is combined with lack of motivation to go farther afield to satisfy it. It's not fancy or artisan, but it is consistent and reliable. The mature isn't really to my taste - I like quite a strong cheddar and I found it just a bit too mild. After tasting a portion of the mature, the remaining portions went into a cheese sauce with a lot of mustard and nutmeg, I have to confess.

This is where the Selections pack gets me into a pickle. The Vintage 20 is really quite delicious. It has lovely little crunchy crystals in it, like a good parmesan, and a really robust flavour without the gum-ripping acidity you sometimes get with cheddar. But there were only 2 portions of it in the Selection pack, and you only get the Vintage 20 in the variety pack along with too much of the less-appealing mature. So what to do? I think when I need cheese snack-packs (for me, they are quite a good alternative to biscuits or chocolate at that 4pm slump time) I would just buy the extra mature and choose consistency over variety. No highs, but no lows either. I really don't live on the edge.
14 little snack-size pieces - or there were before we ate some prior to photographing

5 comments:

Barbara said...

Interesting. We don't have that product here.

Hotly Spiced said...

How lovely to be sent all those cheeses. I love cheese and often order a cheese platter in restaurants. I don't think we have that cheese here - certainly nothing that's packaged like that xx

Alicia Foodycat said...

Barbara - it's good cheese!

Charlie - it's like cheesestiks for grownups.

Caroline said...

Hmm, I've tended to avoid it as a 'big name' brand (which is ridiculous as I happily buy bog-standard supermarket own brand!) so I'll have to give it a go. Co-incidentally I was in Waitrose shortly after reading your post and they had big packs of the vintage 20 - I thought of you!

Alicia Foodycat said...

Caroline - yeah, look it's not an artisan product but it is better than a lot of other so-called cheddars I have tried!

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