TWO new blue cheeses make their debut at the Dales Festival of Food and Drink in Leyburn next month.

Both are produced in Wensleydale - one at the Hawes creamery and the other at Fortmayne Dairy in the lower dale.

Fortmayne's King Richard III Blue follows the success of the white version of the cheese, made by dairy founder Suzanne Stirke, of Newton-le-Willows, near Bedale.

The recipe for the moist, mild cheese was discovered in a notebook hand-written by her grandmother in 1934 during a cheese-making course.

Details of how to make farmhouse Wensleydale led Mrs Stirke to produce the original Richard III cheese, which is sold in Leyburn and in Fortnum and Mason's food hall in London.

The new blue version, launched at the festival over the May Day bank holiday, where tasters are available, is seen as continuing the tradition of cheese-making in the lower dale.

"We believe that Wensleydale cheese was originally blue," said Mrs Stirke. "It was first made at Jervaulx by the Cistercian monks who came over with the Normans and who, in France, made the blue Roquefort cheese. My cheese is creamy and open textured, which helps introduce the blue without too strong a flavour."

Meanwhile, the maturing room at Wensleydale Dairy Products, in Hawes, is packed with the company's Real Blue Wensleydale, ready for the festival.

Sandra Barnard said the line is a revival of a recipe used before the Twenties, when Wensleydale cheese was naturally blue.

"It is a very old cheese," she said. "Until the Twenties, Wensleydale cheese was almost entirely recognised as a blue-veined cheese. It turned naturally blue during the maturing process.

"When it began to be made on a factory scale, the white, crumbly variety became fashionable and the blue one became extinct in the dale."

* TV expert backs festival: page 18