British cheese wasn’t completely non-existent on French soil. The bistro Juveniles, founded by a Briton in 1987, has served it since its inception. But by and large the cheese you could find in French cheesemongers only entrenched the stereotype: bad stilton, Top Hat cheddar and something called “Le Chester” – “a rubbery cheddar-type product”, Hinds recalls. It was mostly bought by homesick British expats.
With an “almighty perception mountain” to climb, Hinds, who speaks French – which he says helped in a cheese world that was “old school, male-dominated, quite pugnacious and stubborn” – brought the finest examples of British classics to France: Colston Bassett Stilton and Montgomery cheddar. Customers were skeptical (“If you declared the cheese was from the UK, 50 per cent wouldn’t eat it”), but those who tried it were impressed and cheesemongers jumped on the bandwagon. “People became curious about these new British cheeses that flew in the face of the perception they all had before, which was that our cheese was rubbish.”
Fast forward to 2022 and you can find British cheeses all over Paris, whether in cheesemongers or restaurants. At L’Entente, Woodhead will often have a wheel of cheddar and a truckle of stilton on display to woo customers, 90 per cent of whom are French. They come for roasts, the wellingtons and the cheese, also found on the Welsh rarebit.
“There was always a bit of a market for good cheddar and stilton in Paris, but it has become cool and trendy with the rise of bistros and natural wine,” Woodhead explains. “If you go to the top 100 trendy little bohemian bourgeois restaurants, chances are you’ll find Stichelton [a raw milk version of Stilton from Nottinghamshire] at half of them.”
While Paris and larger cities are at the vanguard, Hinds has seen British cheese in small-town shops, particularly in areas with larger British populations like the Dordogne. People all over are becoming more open-minded in the age of Instagram. “It’s only the generation of (Jacques) Chirac that thinks British food is what it used to be,” says Woodhead.
While the old workhorses cheddar and stilton were once the only two British cheeses you’d find, today there’s a far wider offering. Taka & Vermo stocks Lincolnshire poacher, Shropshire blue, red Leicester and the raclette-like Ogleshield. At Fromagerie Beaufils one can find British territorials like Lancashire and Caerphilly as well as French-inspired numbers such as Baron Bigod. “Thirty years ago, the idea that you might sell a brie-style cheese made in Suffolk to a Parisian cheese shop – you’d be laughed out of the building,” says Hinds.
For all its progress, British cheese is still niche. “They are only popular with connoisseurs, they won’t sell by themselves,” says Taka & Vermo co-owner Laure Takahashi, who has stocked British cheese since the shop was founded in 2015. Unfamiliar and more expensive, it can be a hard sold But the vast majority of customers, once given a taste, are won round.
Future growth isn’t inevitable – it is already more expensive than the local offering. Nevertheless, the reputation of British cheese in France continues to grow, thanks in part to frequent successes at the World Cheese Awards. Our wine, on the other hand, is still at the foot of the mountain; “It has a long way to go,” says Woodhead.