When you’re compiling a cheese board, you can go as fancy-ass and bougie as you like but there’s absolutely no chance you should be looking past the essential fromage for every grazing platter. The one sharp and perfectly-crumbly chunk of heaven that needs no introduction, Mersey Valley cheese. I’ve been treating myself to the odd cheese platter/snack/meal during the lockdowns, and have formulated a no-arguments-allowed ranking of all the Mersey Valley flavours, for your consideration.
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Smoky Bacon
Look, I’ll admit I haven’t tried out this new flavour because I’m barely eating meat anymore but in my humble opinion meat and meaty flavours should be separate from cheese until you marry them together yourself. Like when you put a slice of cabanossi/cabana on a cube of cheese.
Peppercorn
This is literally bits of pepper in the classic flavour. Not a bad option but it exponentially increases my chances of getting a bit of pepper stuck in my back molars only to dig it out later with my tongue and ruin my mouth.
Original
Look, the OG is good. It’s a great bog-standard crumbly cheese to put on a grazing board, but I’m just not sure how it runs on its own, you know? Works best in a team, and a very good gateway cheese to the wider Mersey Valley family.
Classic
Not to be confused with the Original flavour, the Classic is simply better because it’s a sharper Cheddar. And I fucking love a Cheddar so sharp it’d nearly take a bit out of me if it could. A yum cheese, getting right on the funk levels too.
Jalapeno
I’ll admit usually I’m not a big fan of adding things to cheese, especially a heap of spice, but let me tell you the Jalapeno Mersey Valley is yum as. It somehow perfectly hits the balance between heat and flavour. You can actually taste the jalapeno chilli instead of it just being hot and cheese.
You know how you can sometimes have too much chilli in something and it just takes over all the flavour and then all you can taste is just hot? Yeah, this doesn’t do that, so I have to rank it well.
Ploughmans
I’m such a sucker for a good Ploughmans board and the bitey, punchy, funky cheese that goes with it. My dad regularly made a little snacky Ploughmans board on weekends when we’d washed the car and pottered around in the garden, so I obviously have a lot of sentimental feelings attached to this kind of cheese. Very good with a little pickle, a bit of tomat, and a nice hunk of freshly-baked bread. YUM.
Pickled Onion
This. This is the king shit here my friends. Pickled Onion is the god tier Mersey Valley cheese. The sweetness of the pickled onion cuts through the sharp cheese so perfectly, and the whole thing is just a bloody delicious moment in snacking time. I actually put some on a toasted sandwich the other day to see how that’d go and it was a gamechanger. Pickled onion is delicious and underrated, sharp cheddar cheese is obviously also delicious, so putting the two together is legit heaven. Give us now.
Wildcard: Mexican
Ok so I have never come across this one in my semi-regular cheese quests but it sounds…good? What’s even in this beside red chillies? Maybe some paprika, cumin, coriander and other spices? Fine, I’ll accept I’m going to have to track this one down and wedge it into the list somewhere, so I’ll get back to you on this new flav.
