Gubbeen is a washed-rind Irish farmhouse cheese made since 1979 by the Ferguson family at Gubbeen Farm, near Schull on Ireland's southwest coast. It's known for a sticky pink-orange rind, a golden pliable paste, and a mushroom-and-hazelnut flavor that turns meaty as it matures.
The cheese is old enough, and well-known enough, that a bacterium found living on its rind was formally named after it.
In This Article
A Spanish Cheesemaking Memory Brought to West Cork
Tom Ferguson inherited Gubbeen Farm, a 100-hectare property outside Schull, when he married Giana in the early 1970s. Giana grew up partly in Spain, where her family made goat's-milk cheese on her father's farm in the mountains above Álora, and later lived in France, where she absorbed serious French cheese tradition before marrying into Irish farming life.
She started simply, making cheese in one large pot on the family's Aga stove, drawing on the Spanish techniques she'd learned as a child.
Tom's father William worked alongside her in the earliest days, and the couple spent years building a herd and a proper dairy through seven-day weeks in a country that didn't yet see artisan food as a viable business.
The turning point came in 1989, when Gubbeen won a silver medal at the Royal Dublin Society show. That result convinced the Fergusons cheesemaking could be a real livelihood rather than a farmhouse sideline.
What "Gubbeen" Actually Means
Gubbeen is the anglicized form of the Irish townland name An Goibín, in the parish of Skull (Schull) in County Cork. Ireland's official placenames database, logainm.ie, translates it as "a small beak or point," citing 1841-42 Ordnance Survey notes from John O'Donovan, the standard scholarly source for Irish townland etymology.
A looser popular gloss renders it as "little mouthful," though that version doesn't trace to a primary etymological record the way logainm.ie's "small beak or point" does.
Historical spellings recorded for the townland include Gubyne in 1612, Gubbin in 1616, and Gutbeene in 1655, before settling into the modern "Gubbeen" by the 18th century.
How Gubbeen Is Made
The cheese is made from pasteurized cow's milk. Sources disagree on the rennet: Neal's Yard Dairy, the cheese's main UK importer, states it's animal rennet, while a Culture magazine profile describes a vegetable rennet instead.
No source resolves this cleanly, so treat the rennet type as unconfirmed rather than picking one version to state as fact.
What's well documented is the rind. Wheels are regularly washed with a solution containing isolated natural Gubbeen rind flora, white wine, salt, and water, which encourages Brevibacterium linens to grow and produces the cheese's sticky pink-orange color.
Aging runs roughly two to three months, and Neal's Yard Dairy matures the cheese a further one to two weeks in its warmest room before sale, to bring out its "meaty" character at its peak.
Washing is a repeated job rather than a single step at the start. The rind flora only stays active while the surface stays damp and salty, so the wheels go back under the brine again and again across those two to three months.
The Bacterium Named After This Cheese
Gubbeen's rind has drawn genuine scientific attention. In 2001, researchers led by Brennan and colleagues formally described a new bacterial species isolated from Gubbeen's surface in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, naming it Microbacterium gubbeenense directly after the cheese it was found on.
Follow-up microbiology research on the stability of Gubbeen's rind bacterial community was later published as well, and Microbacterium gubbeenense has since turned up on other European washed-rind cheeses including Livarot, Raclette, and Tilsit, confirming it isn't unique to Gubbeen but was first identified there.
What Gubbeen Tastes Like
Neal's Yard Dairy describes the paste as "bouncy, unctuous and smooth," with "a medley of savoury and nutty flavours with a pleasing bite at its pink rind." Culture magazine independently describes a semi-soft, pliable, golden straw-colored paste with small holes, an aroma "reminiscent of an old cellar," and flavors of "mushrooms, butter, peat and nuts."
Irish retailer Ardkeen echoes the mushroom and buttery-milk notes independently, and Murray's Cheese in the US calls it "a creamy, supple washed rind cheese with aromas of toasted walnut and an earthy mushroom essence." Across five or more independent sources, the same core notes repeat: mushroom, hazelnut or walnut, butter, and a savory, meaty finish.
The rind and the paste taste like two different cheeses. Scraped on its own the rind is salty and sharply savory, while the paste away from it is milder and buttery.
Aroma outruns flavor here, which catches people out. A wedge unwrapped at the table smells of cellar and cured meat far more strongly than it tastes, and the guests who pull back at the smell usually finish the piece.
Age shows in the paste before it shows in the rind. A younger wheel springs back under a thumb, and a fully mature one presses in and stays pressed, with the meaty finish sitting further forward in the mouth.
The small holes scattered through the paste are normal for this style rather than a fault. What matters is the paste around them, which should look moist and faintly glossy on a cut face instead of dry and matte.
Awards
Gubbeen won gold in the washed-rind category at the 2002 British Cheese Awards, followed by further gold medals in 2010 and 2016, the 2016 award specifically for Mature Smoked Gubbeen. It added two bronze medals at the 2017 British Cheese Awards for both the plain and smoked versions, plus gold and Best in Class for Washed Rind Cheeses at the CAIS Irish Cheese Awards the same year.
More recently, a Dunnes Stores house-brand version of Gubbeen won a 3-star Great Taste Award in 2026, the program's top honor, following a 2-star award for a Musgraves-branded Gubbeen in 2020. No World Cheese Awards result for Gubbeen turned up in research, which isn't evidence the cheese has never placed there, only that no specific result could be confirmed.
A Family Business Now Two Generations Deep
Gubbeen has grown into something bigger than a single cheese.
Tom and Giana's son Fingal Ferguson built and runs the Gubbeen Smokehouse, making salamis, chorizo, hams, and bacon from the farm's own pigs, which are partly fed on leftover whey from the cheese dairy. Daughter Clovisse Ferguson, a professional cook, runs the kitchen garden that supplies herbs and vegetables to both the family and Fingal's smokehouse.
Fingal has described the farm's approach to scale plainly: "We are not intensive farmers. What we are looking at is getting better, instead of bigger."
Sources disagree on whether the family represents the farm's fifth or sixth generation, so treat the exact generation count as unresolved rather than settled.
Smoked Gubbeen and Other Variants
Smoked Gubbeen is the best-known variant: standard wheels are brined, dried, then cold-smoked for about four days over beech and oak wood that's been seasoned for a year before use. Fingal built the smokehouse himself rather than sending cheeses to a third party, and that smokehouse has since grown into a full charcuterie operation selling salami, chorizo, and cured meats under the Gubbeen name.
Cold smoking does not cook the cheese, so a smoked wheel keeps the same bouncy paste as the plain one. The change is strongest near the surface, where the smoke has had four days to work inward.
That matters at the board. A thin slice cut across a wedge carries more smoke than a thick one, so smoked Gubbeen is worth cutting slimmer than the plain version.
How to Serve Gubbeen
Ardkeen, one of Gubbeen's Irish retailers, recommends pairing it with gingerbread and dark beers, a specific and slightly unusual suggestion compared to the more generic wine advice found elsewhere.
For wine, off-dry and aromatic whites are the common recommendation, including Alsace Riesling, Vouvray, and Gewürztraminer, chosen to stand up to the rind's savory funk without overpowering the mushroom and nut notes. Serve it simply, on a board with crusty bread, fruit preserves, and a handful of walnuts or almonds.
Dark beer and gingerbread work for the same reason. Roasted malt and molasses both bring sweetness, which gives the savory rind something to push against instead of a second savory flavor.
Gubbeen also melts well, which not every washed-rind cheese does. The paste is pliable rather than crumbly, so it goes to a smooth layer on toast or through a toasted sandwich without splitting into oil and solids.
Decide about the rind before it goes near heat. Heated rind turns noticeably stronger and saltier, so trim it back on a first attempt and leave it on once you know you want that.
Cut a wheel into wedges rather than slabs off the top. The paste nearest the rind is softer and more savory than the middle, and wedges put some of each on every plate.
What to Use Instead When Gubbeen Isn't Available
A young Taleggio offers a similar washed-rind funk and pliable texture. Livarot is a stronger substitute for readers who want the same rind bacteria family in a more assertive package.
Taleggio is the easier swap of the two, because it shares the pliable paste and melts the same way. It runs milder and more milky through the middle, so it carries less of the meaty finish that makes Gubbeen work next to a dark beer.
Livarot pushes the savory side much further. Reach for it when the cheese is the point of the plate, and stay with Taleggio when it has to sit beside milder cheeses without flattening them.
Buying Gubbeen
Gubbeen is sold as mini, half, and full wheels through specialty retailers in Ireland, the UK, and the US, with a smoked version available alongside the plain original.
Size changes the eating more than it changes the price per pound. A mini wheel carries more rind for its volume, so it tastes saltier and more savory than a wedge cut from a full wheel of the same age.
Settle the plain-or-smoked question before you get to the counter. Smoked Gubbeen puts beech and oak into everything it shares a board with, which makes it a cheese to buy alongside the plain version rather than instead of it.
At roughly $38 per pound in the US, buy to the week rather than to the discount. The rind keeps developing after a wheel is cut, so a piece you finish in seven days eats better than a half wheel that sits.
Nutrition and Safety
Per 100g, Sheridans Cheesemongers lists 271 kcal, 30.6g fat (20.5g saturated), 0.8g carbohydrate, 21.1g protein, and 0.769g salt. Wikipedia separately cites 48% fat, but that figure is expressed as fat-in-dry-matter, a standard cheese-labeling convention, not the same measurement as the per-100g total-fat figure above, so the two aren't in conflict.
Gubbeen is made with pasteurized milk, which makes it a safer choice than raw-milk cheeses for pregnant women and others avoiding unpasteurized dairy.
Storing Gubbeen
Once cut, use Gubbeen within about a week, since the rind continues to develop and the flavor sharpens even under refrigeration.
Give a washed rind its own closed box in the fridge. The rind keeps smelling while it sits, and butter, milk, and anything else left uncovered nearby picks that up inside a day.
Use a fresh sheet of paper at every rewrap. A washed rind sheds moisture as it sits, and a damp sheet holds that moisture against the surface until sticky turns to slimy.
