Francis Gimblett
Talk: Saturday 2 September, 2pm
Francis runs the Gimblett Cheese Company with his wife Pam, from their micro-dairy in Haslemere, alongside Taste of the Vine, a wine events company.
Cheese has been a passion for Francis since training as a chef in 1980s; however, whilst working at the Grand Hotel in Brighton he developed a love and knowledge for wine and became a sommelier. Since then, and before starting Taste of the Vine with Pam in 1997, Francis worked in wine broking roles in London as well as at wineries in California, Romania and Australia.
Pam introduced cheese events to Taste of the Vine’s offering early on but it wasn’t until the Autumn of 2013, during a trip in Normandy, the couple decided to start a micro-dairy to produce a new type of English cheese to use at their events and sell to the Surrey market. The last four years have included training and travel to form their recipe, eighteen months of trails, and a year of commercial trials. The result is Floyd: a ‘Haslemere’, a washed-rind cheese from the Surrey Hills.
