grok and korg, yarg and gray

Alan and Jenny Gray of Withiel Valley, Cornwall were inspired to turn to cheese-making when they located an old book in their attic that included a 1615 recipe by Gervase Markham for a nettle-wrapped semi-hard cheese.

The Grays christened their nettle-wrapped cheese “Yarg” (their last name spelled backwards). However, the Grays’ initial success led to a nightmare for their fledgling operation, when in 1982-83, the company needed extra milk to meet demand for Yarg but were refused reasonable terms by the MMB.

The story of how and why the Grays were unable to obtain milk to make their cheese is complicated, but without the help of the (now defunct) Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas (CoSIRA), and the work of people like Patrick Rance to draw negative attention to the convoluted and asinine ways of the MMB, Yarg cheese likely would have gone extinct.

As it was, “this story has a happy ending,” Rance writes in the 1985 GFG. A new dairy was established, Lynher Valley Dairy, on the Duchy of Cornwall estate to provide plenty of milk. The Grays sold their Yarg recipe to the owners of said dairy, the late Michael and Margaret Horrell.

A story of Yarg’s s history can be found in a February 2013 article in Cornwall Life. In 1995, Catherine Mead wanted to diversify her family’s farm, and she began working with the Horrells to increase production of Cornish Yarg. Catherine Mead’s success led in 2001 to the establishment of a second dairy, this one at Mead’s Pengreep Farm between Lanner and Ponsanooth, Cornwall. When the Horrells retired in 2006, Cornish Yarg production moved solely to the Pengreep Farm, and the milk for Yarg comes from the Mead family’s Holstein/Frisian herd and from other Cornwall cows whose milk makes upwards of 200 tonnes of Yarg cheese.