KL Magazine promotes everything that’s good and great about life in Norfolk. Every issue highlights why it’s such a great place to live, work and visit.
A special food & drink edition of KL Magazine showcases the county’s finest producers and restaurants. Read their inspiring stories and watch the accompanying behind-the-scenes videos.
Mrs Temple is one such story.
Catherine Temple has been making her famous cheeses for over twenty years at Copys Green Farm in Wighton, not far from Wells. Her cheeses, named after local towns & villages, are sold in farms shops and delis, and feature on menus in pubs and restaurants.
If you find yourself tucking into a cheeseboard in North Norfolk, chances are it’s Mrs Temple’s cheese!
After living and working abroad with her husband Stephen, they returned in 1998 to take over the dairy farm founded by Stephen’s great-grandfather. To add extra income, Catherine saw a gap in the market and decided to use their milk to make cheese.
A combination of childhood cheesemaking memories, library books and attending a cheesemakers event led to her first attempt at making cheese in the farm kitchen. She successfully sold her cheese at a local farmers market and her cheese business was born.
Catherine Temple’s famous cheeses are Binham Blue (creamy blue cheese), Copys Cloud (soft cheese with a white rind), Gurney’s Gold (rind washed soft cheese), Walsingham (hard, matured cheese), Wells Alpine (hard, continental-style cheese) and Wighton (soft fresh tangy cheese). They are all delicious!
Her best-selling cheese is Binham Blue, a ‘melt in the mouth’ soft blue-veined cheese, accounting for two thirds of her turnover.
Walsingham is a hard, pressed cheese, similar to cheddar and perfect for a ploughman’s lunch. Gurney’s Gold has a peach-like golden skin and a melting texture, similar to Italian Tallegio.
Wighton is fresh and creamy and can be used instead of feta, and Copys Cloud is a Camembert-style cheese. Wells Alpine has a nutty flavour like French Comté.
Mrs Temple uses pasteurised cow’s milk from her herd of Brown Swiss cows, a popular dairy breed due to their high-quality milk, rich in protein and butterfat, which is ideal for cheese making.
The cows are extensively grazed and fed a diet of high-quality Norfolk produce, thriving on the crops grown at the farm. Their milk is pasteurised and turned into cheese in the farm’s on-site dairy.
The lovely looking cows are both curious and playful.
The dairy farm is run on renewable energy created using biomass technology. An anaerobic digestor uses farm waste to generate heat, hot water and electricity and power the cheesemaking process.
Best-selling Binham Blue has won both bronze and silver at the British Cheese Awards. Wells Alpine and Wighton have won bronze and silver respectively, and Gurney’s Gold, rather fittingly, has won gold.
In 2023, Copys Cloud, Gurney’s Gold and Wighton were all awarded silver medals at the Artisan Cheese Awards, with Binham Blue picking up bronze.
More recently, Mrs Temple’s Cheese was named winner of the Field to Fork category at the Norfolk Magazine Food & Drink Awards 2024.
Catherine said: “It’s a whole team, it’s not just about me. It’s a great honour, it really is.”
