But what is Cow Club? Cow Club is a meeting of like minds that exist on a plane that is of a spiritual and gastronomic enormity the like of which has never before been seen. This spiritual plane is to be found sitting astride invisible bridges betwixt the twin planets of Les Vaches et Les Fromages. The brainchild of Neal's Yard Dairy's Bronwen Percival and Fen Farm Dairy's Jonny Crickmore, Octet de Hot Club de France y Royaume Uni au Lait Cru's premier excursion was to Normandy in 2017. I was there, Simon Jones of Lincolnshire Poacher was also there, as was Stonebeck Cheese's Andrew Hattan, NYD's Jenn Kast and Mons Fromager's Max Jones.
Auvergne will involve all of the above, minus, sadly, my dear friend Max, who is to be found busy performing culinary, educational and environmentally important pursuits en Co. Cork, Irlande, at Woodcock Smokery. We have newcomers though: Paul from Appleby's Cheshire and Neill from Doddington Dairy. PLUS a regal delegation of farming and cheesemaking brethren we met en Normandie.
If, during my absence, Westcombe Dairy's Milton herd has a heifer calf born of an unnamed cow family then that cow family will be automatically named the Canteloubes, after the man who pieced-together and orchestrated folksongs of the Massif Central, a work which became know as Chants d'Auvergne. A particularly beautiful unnamed heifer may even be crowned Baïléro, after that particularly beautiful Auvergnat song. She'd have to be pretty spectacular though. And then, if a cow was to begin to calve and a shard of golden sun emanated from her withins as they opened-up, then that calf would get the ultimate name: Nectaire.
But after last night's musical and vinous indulgences, today I was being a right old swot on the train to that London. You see, the Cow Club group leader, Bronwen, sent us four research papers to read relating to our trip to Auvergne.
One of these papers is an old review paper favourite of mine from my university studies and so it was good to read it again to remind me all about how cow diet can affect the sensory profile of cheese. To me, maize is still sitting on the Naughty Step and biodiverse, flower-rich meadows are still lounging around in The Great Penthouse of Flavour.
The many works of the authors of this paper and the one on shared bacterial communities between cow teats and cheese, names like Bruno Martin, Isabelle Verdier-Metz and Marie-Christine Montel, taught me so much about optimising farming to make the most enjoyable-to-eat cheese. The research seems to often come back to biodiversity in the animal feed walking hand-in-hand with the resulting richly-flavoured human feed. And when human feed tastes good then it has more value on all sorts of levels.
I have much to thank those scientists for, for their work informs so much of what I have done and continue to do on the farm day-to-day. Luckily I'll get to see some of them again when Cow Club visits their research laboratory in Auvergne next week. I shall be Charlie in Willie Wonka's factory.
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