IIT has been an interesting few months for one of Yorkshire’s, nay, the UK’s, finest artisan cheesemakers.

Shepherds Purse at Newsham, near Thirsk, has never been far from the headlines. In June the firm, run by the Bell family, was picked by Blur musician and cheesemaker Alex James to make his Blue Monday cow’s milk cheese under trademark.

It’s not hard to understand why the family business should be picked out from all the small independent cheese producers across the UK.

Despite supplying some of the country’s biggest outlets, Shepherds Purse still makes cheese by hand, justifying that rather over-used and abused “artisan” label.

Then there was the little debacle over the cheeses that somehow the stewards left in the fridge at the Great Yorkshire Show, which meant they were never put before the judges.

Well, I guess it could be argued that it gave the others a chance, Shepherds Purse having an excellent record at the show.

But nevertheless, the accolades have kept coming. In May, one of its blue cheeses, Buffalo Blue, picked up a Good Housekeeping Food Award for a cheese manufactured by a small producer. It’s just one of a number of honours this particular blue has been awarded since it was first produced on the Bells’ kitchen table at Leachfield Grange in 2001. They include two Great Taste Awards in 2011 and 2012.

It’s a long time since I had sampled it but the Good Housekeeping award prompted me to pick some up at Lewis and Cooper in Northallerton – it stocks all the Shepherds Purse cheeses – and teamed it up with Raydale Preserves’ Blue Cheese Lover’s Pineapple Chutney and some Scottish oatcakes.

Of course, some people find blue cheese of any sort hard to love. I blame the Danish Blue that was a 1970s cheeseboard staple and had all the subtlety of a Viking raiding party laying waste to the shores of Eastern England. Its sharpness had a tendency to turn the roof of one’s mouth red raw, such was its strength.

There’s no risk of that with this blue, even if eaten a bit past its best-before date.

The Italian buffalo milk makes it smoothly creamy in texture and the blue veining is light. It could almost be the blue cheese novice’s starter cheese.

There’s a hint of chalkiness, especially as it gets older, and that quality worked particularly well with the slightly spicy sweetness of the Wensleydale-made chutney.