It’s been called “the grate cheese robbery.”
But it’s no joke to the tight-knit world of artisanal British cheese makers, which is reeling from the disappearance of 22 metric tons of rare Cheddar worth at least 300,000 pounds, about $390,000, in what appears to be the biggest con to hit their industry in decades.
“We never imagined that this sort of thing would happen,” said Patrick Holden, whose dairy farm in Wales made some of the missing Cheddar.
“Of course,” he added, “people have bad debts. But theft? I mean, that just doesn’t happen.”
It all started in July. That’s when Neal’s Yard Dairy, a leading London cheese retailer, said that it had received a major order from what appeared to be a “legitimate wholesale distributor for a major French retailer.”
The company turned to Mr. Holden’s dairy farm and to two other cheese producers — Westcombe Dairy and Trethowan Brothers — to fill the order, which, at 22 metric tons, was more than one could provide alone.
Mr. Holden said that he was initially flattered. A French chain wanted to buy that much British cheese? And Cheddar, such a quintessentially British variety?
“We’d been going around, proudly, saying: ‘Guess what, a French supermarket is buying our cheese,’” Mr. Holden said, chuckling.
“We never thought that would happen,” he continued. “Well, turns out, it hasn’t.”
Neal’s Yard sent the cheese off in two shipments in September — and payment was due on Oct. 7, according to a partner in the company, David Lockwood. When the money had not come through a week later, Mr. Lockwood said, Neal’s Yard tried to chase up the payment but got no response.
“Basically, our contacts became uncontactable,” said Mr. Lockwood, who declined to share the correspondence with The New York Times.
The company went to the police in London on Oct. 21, “when we were certain we’d been scammed,” Mr. Lockwood added in a text message.
London’s Metropolitan Police confirmed that it had received a report about “the theft of a large quantity of cheese” from a company in Southwark, a borough in the southeastern part of the British capital where Neal’s Yard has a warehouse.
Criminals have hit the dairy industry before. In 2015, the Italian police arrested a gang accused of stealing about $875,000 worth of Parmigiano-Reggiano. The following year, thieves in Wisconsin stole a trailer with about $46,000 of cheese. More recently, thieves made off with about $23,000 of cheese in the Netherlands.
But while “this kind of thing does happen in Italy a bit more,” said Patrick McGuigan, a British food writer who has written two books about cheese, he added, “in the U.K., it’s very, very rare.”
Not unprecedented, though. In a cheese heist in Britain in 1998, thieves reportedly made off with six tons of champion Cheddar.
Offloading the stolen cheese could prove difficult, Mr. McGuigan said. “It’s a bit like, you know, if you steal a Van Gogh painting, it’s quite hard to sell it, because everybody knows it’s a Van Gogh painting,” he explained.
The police are investigating the latest case. No arrests have been made. For now, the industry is urging vigilance. Jamie Oliver, a British celebrity chef, warned cheese enthusiasts to be “wary of suspiciously large quantities of premium Cheddar on the black market.”
“Remember, if the deal seems too gouda to be true, it probably is,” he wrote on Instagram. “Let’s find these cheese stealers.”
The cheese producers were mourning the loss on several levels.
“I feel like I knew each one individually,” said Todd Trethowan of the lost wheels of Cheddar his farm provided. “To think that it had gone missing, and that waste of effort, it was a blow.”
Mr. Lockwood said that Neal’s Yard had honored its payments to the three cheese makers. There are also the additional costs of the lost labor, packing and shipping.
He said that he did not think his company would recoup much from insurance. “Remember, we loaded it onto the truck,” he said. “We were scammed.”
But Mr. Lockwood said that the company was also trying to learn from the experience — and maybe look for a silver lining.
“It’d be a great action comedy,” he said. “Maybe we can sell the rights and get some of the money back.”
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