Dairy to turn the air blue across the Golden Vale

ONE of the country’s most distinctive tastes is set to be enjoyed by an even wider audience thanks to the launch of a new €6 million cheesemaking dairy.

Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney yesterday opened the facility at the headquarters of Cashel Blue and Crozier Blue cheeses, in the heart of the Golden Vale. The dairy, outside Fethard in Co Tipperary, is the largest farmhouse cheesemaking operation in Ireland and is just a stone’s throw from where Cashel Blue was first made in 1982 by husband-and-wife team Louis and Jane Grubb.

The €6m investment will allow the Grubb family to double production at the site at Beechmount Farm, which currently employs 25 local people and produces 250,000 tonnes of cheese every year, one of the biggest in Britain and Ireland.