Manufacture and PDO Status
Blue Stilton's distinctive blue veins are created by piercing the crust of the cheese with stainless steel needles, allowing air into the core. The manufacturing and ripening process takes approximately nine to twelve weeks.
For cheese to use the name "Stilton", it must be made in one of the three counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, and must use pasteurised local milk. The manufacturers of Stilton cheese in these counties applied for and received Protected Geographical Status (PDO) in 1996.
There are currently just five dairies licensed to make Stilton (three in Leicestershire and two in Nottinghamshire), each being subject to regular audit by an independent inspection agency accredited to European Standard EN 45011. At present, all but one of the licensed dairies are based in the Vale of Belvoir, which straddles the Nottinghamshire-Leicestershire border. This area is commonly regarded as the heartland of Stilton production, with dairies located in the town of Melton Mowbray (Leics.) and the villages of Colston Bassett (Notts.), Cropwell Bishop (Notts.), Long Clawson (Leics.) and Saxelbye (Leics.). Another Leicestershire dairy was located in the grounds of Quenby Hall near the village of Hungarton, which is outside the generally-accepted boundaries of the Vale of Belvoir. Quenby Hall restarted Stilton production in a new dairy in August 2005 (the old dairy dates back to the 18th century) but the business folded in 2011. The only licensed dairy that produced Stilton elsewhere (at Hartington in Derbyshire) was acquired by the Long Clawson dairy in 2008 and closed in 2009, with production transferred to Leicestershire. There is currently no Stilton dairy in Derbyshire, although plans are afoot to re-introduce the Hartington Creamery brand .
Stilton cheese cannot, however, be produced in the village that gave the cheese its name. This is because Stilton village is not in the three permitted counties; it is in the administrative county of Cambridgeshire, and in the historic county of Huntingdonshire. There had been no evidence at the time of the application for PDO 1996 that cheese using the same recipe as modern Stilton cheese had ever been made in the village. However recent evidence indicates that it is unlikely that the village would have been a centre for selling of cheese, unless cheese was also made in the area. Furthermore a recipe for a cream cheese made in Stilton in the early 18th century has since been discovered and since more than one type of cheese was usually made, it is possible that a blue cheese was also made in the area.
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