I went to see the Haldanes on a morning when the sea fret was still lying over the fields. Their dairy is near Dunbar, in a low stone steading at the end of a track that I would not have found without a phone call and some patient directions.
Morag and Duncan Haldane make four cheeses from the milk of their own herd of about eighty Ayrshire cows. There is a hard, nutty wheel that they call the Winter Hard, a semi-soft with a washed orange rind, a fresh cheese that sells out in a day, and a blue that takes the best part of a year to be ready. All of them are made by hand, in small batches, in a room no bigger than my flat.
The ice house
What makes the cheese unusual is where it ripens. At the back of the farm, built into a bank, is a Victorian ice house: a domed brick chamber, damp and cold all year, that was once used to store ice cut from the pond. Morag found it when she and Duncan took over the farm in 2012. It turned out to hold a steady temperature of eight degrees, with just the humidity a rind needs.
Now it is lined with slatted wooden shelves, and the wheels sit on them for months. Morag turns them by hand, brushes the rinds and tastes one every fortnight. She says that she can tell the weather from the flavour. A wheel made in a wet June is softer and more savoury than one made in a dry July.
Why a Tuesday
The cheese arrives at Ortiga every Tuesday, in the same van that delivers the vegetables from Gowanbank. We tried a few schedules, but Tuesday works because the restaurant is shut on Monday. The cheese rests overnight, and by Wednesday lunchtime it has had time to come up to room temperature.
On the menu you will see a plate of Italian cheeses at Ortiga and another of East Lothian cheeses at Salt Room. The Haldane cheeses are on both. I think of them as the Scottish cousins of the Italian wheels, made with the same patience in a very different climate.
If you want to try them, ask for the board. And if you are ever near Dunbar, phone Morag first. She does not mind visitors, as long as they bring good boots.
