Auld Lochnagar is a raw milk cheese made near Ballater in the Cairngorms, and it is easy to buy the wrong one by accident.
The same dairy makes a cheese called Lochnagar as well. The two are related, they sit side by side on the same counter, and they do not eat alike.
The word doing all the work is the Scots auld, meaning old, and here it refers to the ageing rather than the recipe.
In This Article
What Is Auld Lochnagar?
Royal Deeside is not obvious cheese country. It is a narrow strip of farmland squeezed between the Cairngorm plateau and the Dee, and the creamery making this cheese sits inside the national park boundary at Cambus O'May, near Ballater.
Milk comes from the dairy's own Holstein Friesians and goes into the vat unpasteurised.
Traditional animal rennet sets the curd, which rules the cheese out for vegetarians and is worth knowing before you put it on a shared board.
The curd is also coloured with annatto, which puts this cheese in the same tradition as the orange English territorials rather than the pale Scottish cheddars.
The dairy works to family recipes it says have not changed in fifty years, and the cheeses are hand made rather than run through a line.
It takes its name from Lochnagar, the mountain standing over the glen, and the rest of the range is named the same way after local landmarks.
What Does the Auld Actually Change?
The recipe is not the variable here, which is what makes the two cheeses so easy to confuse and so different to eat. What separates them is time, and everything time does to a paste.
Plain Lochnagar is the younger cheese, matured about four months against Auld Lochnagar's twelve. It comes out creamy and fresh, nutty, with a savoury note at the end.
That younger cheese is the dairy's decorated one, a gold medal winner at the British Cheese Awards, which is worth knowing if you assumed the aged version was automatically the better buy.
Those extra eight months move the cheese a long way, and they move it in one direction rather than several.
The paste dries and tightens as moisture leaves, so a cheese that was creamy becomes one that breaks into crumbs.
The flavour concentrates in the same direction rather than changing course. The nuttiness deepens and a tang arrives that the young cheese does not have.
Neither is a better cheese. They are two answers to different questions, and the label is the only thing telling you which you have.
That matters more than it would for most producers, because the difference is not a grade. Nothing on the counter marks one as mature and the other as young in the way a cheddar would be marked.
If the piece in front of you crumbles at the edge of the cut face, it is the aged one whatever the ticket says.
The dairy also makes Lairig Ghru, Cambus O'May and a whisky-finished Auld Reekie, all named after local landmarks. If a Scottish deli lists several unfamiliar names together, they are likely to be one producer's range rather than several unrelated cheeses.
Why Is It Crumbly Rather Than Firm?
Length of ageing is only half of what decides a texture, and the other half is the room. Twelve months in a cold, damp store dries a cheese slowly, and slow drying produces a very different paste from a warm, fast maturation of the same duration.
The wheels are turned by hand throughout, which keeps the moisture moving evenly instead of settling to one side.
That regime puts it in the crumbly British tradition rather than the firm alpine one, closer in body to an aged Cheshire than to anything from the cheddar family.
The practical consequence is that it will not slice thinly. Cut it in chunks and let it break where it wants to.
What Does Auld Lochnagar Taste Like?
Twelve-month cheeses usually pay for their depth with weight, turning savoury and dense and sitting heavily at the end. This one does not, and the dairy's own word for the finish is fresh.
Before that it is tangy and nutty, which is the part most people taste first.
The lift at the end is an acidity thing rather than a salt thing, and it is what makes the cheese work on a board without chutney or fruit to cut it.
The paste is a deep orange, and that colour is added rather than natural. The dairy uses annatto, the same seed dye behind Red Leicester and the orange cheeses of Gloucestershire.
The colour therefore tells you nothing about age or richness. A pale piece is not a younger cheese, it is a different cheese.
The natural rind is dry and is not eaten. Trim it with any hardened paste sitting directly under it.
The deep orange comes from annatto, the same colouring that makes the Gloucestershire cheese and the Leicestershire one what they are.
Both of those are firmer and easier to buy, so they are the sensible substitutes if the colour was what caught your eye.
How Should You Buy and Keep It?
Buying this well is mostly a matter of asking one question and looking at one thing. Ask which of the two you are being handed, because the names are close enough that a busy counter can get it wrong.
Look for a dry, matte cut face. Damp or glossy usually means the piece has been sitting in film rather than paper.
Storage matters more here than for a firmer cheese, because a dry crumbly paste sweats quickly once it is sealed in anything airtight.
For a drink, the cheesemaker's own suggestion is a Speyside whisky, and the aged version is described as the kinder of the two to wine.
| Pairing | Type | Why It Works |
|---|---|---|
| Auld Lochnagar + Speyside whisky | Drink | The cheesemaker's own suggestion. Speyside sweetness meets the tang without the peat smoke that would bury it. |
| Auld Lochnagar + a medium red | Wine | The aged version is described as the kinder of the two to wine. Keep the tannin moderate so the crumble is not dried further. |
| Auld Lochnagar + oatcakes | Bread | The local answer and a good one. Oat texture suits a paste that breaks rather than slices. |
| Auld Lochnagar + apple | Fruit | Fresh acidity against the annatto-coloured, nutty paste, and it keeps the fresh finish in play. |
Distribution runs to Scottish delis, cheese counters and the creamery itself, and not much further, so a reader outside Scotland is realistically choosing a substitute.
What Can You Use Instead?
The crumbly British territorials are the right family to look in, not the cheddars.
An aged wheel from the border counties is the closest on texture and carries a similar tang, though it runs a little saltier.
A mature crumbly from the north west gets you the fracture with a butterier flavour and less of the sharp finish.
Do not reach for a block cheddar as a stand-in, because that gives you the age without the fracture, and the way this cheese breaks is half of what you are buying.
SOURCES & REFERENCES
Auld Lochnagar FAQ
Two things the name causes trouble with.
No. They come from the same dairy and the same tradition, but Auld Lochnagar is aged up to twelve months and eats dry and crumbly, where plain Lochnagar is younger, creamier and milder.
No. It is made with traditional animal rennet and unpasteurised milk, so it will not suit a vegetarian and falls under the usual raw milk advice in pregnancy.
