Next: 17 Mar 2027
St Patrick's Day and Irish farmhouse cheese
Ireland's national day, a good time to taste the farmhouse cheeses that have grown up since the 1970s.
Cheeses for St Patrick's Day and Irish farmhouse cheese
Saint Patrick's Day on 17 March is Ireland's national holiday, with parades in Dublin and wherever the Irish have settled. Ireland has always been a dairy country, but most of its milk went into butter and block Cheddar until the 1970s, when a handful of farm families began making their own cheeses. Milleens, a washed-rind cheese from the Beara peninsula, was among the first; Coolea, a Gouda-style cheese made in the hills of west Cork, and Durrus, a soft washed-rind cheese, followed. Irish Cheddar remains the everyday cheese, and a board of farmhouse cheeses has become a common way to mark the day.
The cheeses
Also part of it, and being written: Milleens (A pioneering washed-rind cheese from the Beara peninsula.), Durrus Farmhouse Cheese (A soft washed-rind cheese from the Sheep's Head peninsula.), Cheddar cheese (Irish Cheddar, the country's everyday cheese.).
Written by the EveryCheese desk with AI assistance. Background: "Saint Patrick's Day" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.