Corra Linn

In the early 1980s Humphrey Errington took on a smallholding just south of Biggar, not far from Edinburgh.  Wanting to recreate a cheese traditional to the area, he discovered that sheep’s milk rather than cows’ milk was more commonly found on this rugged landscape.  He travelled to France to find finest dairy sheep, the Lacaune breed (the breed used to produce Roquefort), so he could import some and set about creating an unpressed blue cheese.

The cheese he created, Lanark Blue, was soon established and quickly became a well-known classic throughout Scotland, as Humphrey became an important figure on the Scottish cheese scene through helping to keep unpasteurised cheese available.

Towards the end of the 2000s, however, Humphrey started to take a back seat as his daughter, Selina took on the cheese making.  With her husband, Andrew, now running the farm and by increasing their farmhouse herd to 450- head of sheep, Selina has taken the business from strength to strength and in 2008 she started to develop new cheeses as a use for the abundant summer milk produced by this large herd.  Up until then, their milk was used to make Lanark Blue, which was aged longer so that supply could be maintained all year round (the sheep go out of season in the winter).  This meant, however, that the cheese often became too strong and overpowering.  So Selina set about developing a cheese that could be aged for longer than the 3-4 months at which Lanark Blue is at its best.  The fabulous rich milk provided by the Lacaune breed of sheep proved perfect for a hard sheep’s milk cheese made to a Manchego recipe, which she called Corra Linn.

Andy Swinscoe (owner of The Courtyard Dairy) visited Erringtons’ farm in 2008 and tasted the first ever Corra Linn ‘trial’ batch.  It wasn’t perfect, but it showed all the promise of their great milk.  Over five years the recipe for Corra Linn was slowly developed: the cheese is now cloth-bound (the cloth is held on using local rapeseed oil), and at The Courtyard Dairy it is sold aged for nine months, when it exhibits the fine, sweet, floral-heathery earthy notes and long lasting deep-flavour.

This product will have two weeks shelf life from the date of delivery.  Conveniently, at checkout you can choose a delivery date even well in the future if you would like your cheese delivering for a specific event.