page_title: Wensleydale cheese
section_title: References in culture
hierarchical_section_title: Wensleydale cheese / References in culture
caption_attribution_description: English: Wensleydale Creamery
context_page_description: Wensleydale is a style of cheese originally produced in Wensleydale, North Yorkshire, England, but now mostly made in large commercial creameries throughout the UK. The term "Yorkshire Wensleydale" can only be used for cheese that is made in Wensleydale.
context_section_description: In his essay "In Defence of English Cooking", George Orwell rates Wensleydale as second only to Stilton among British cheese varieties.
  In the popular 1962 novel "Hornblower and the Hotspur" (set in 1803) the title character makes "an epoch-making discovery, that Wensleydale cheese and port were a pair of heavenly twins" (ch. 9).
  Wensleydale was one of the cheeses named by John Cleese in the Monty Python sketch "The Cheese Shop", which originally appeared in a 1972 episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. In addition, the shop owner, played by Michael Palin, was named 'Henry Wensleydale', which caused some confusion between the two when the cheese was mentioned.
  Wensleydale appears in the "Cheese Roll Call" segment of the cartoon Pinky and the Brain. He is voiced by Jeff Bennett.
  In the 1990s, sales of Wensleydale cheese had fallen so low that production in the last dairy in Wensleydale itself was at risk of being suspended. The popular Wallace and Gromit animated shorts A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, and A Close Shave had the main character Wallace, a cheese connoisseur, mention Wensleydale as a particularly favourite cheese. Animator Nick Park chose it solely because it had a good name that would be interesting to animate the lip sync to rather than due to its origins in northern England where the shorts were set. He was also unaware of the financial difficulties that the company was experiencing. The company contacted Aardman Animations about a licence for a special brand of "Wallace and Gromit Wensleydale", which proved to be an enormous success. When the 2005 full-length Wallace and Gromit film, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, was released, sales of Wensleydale cheeses increased by 23%.
caption: Traditional equipment at the Wensleydale Creamery
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