It was with great sadness that we received the news just last month that Carrowholly, our locally produced and much loved cheese, would be ceasing production within the coming weeks.

Andrew Pelham Byrne started making his cheese way back in 1999, just a few years after we started our own business. Since then, we’ve been lucky enough to have regular deliveries of  his full-flavoured and deliciously creamy cheese varieties, originally to our café and  later on, to our shop on Spencer street. In fact, the original inspiration for our decision to open a delicatessen in 2007 was to meet the demand that existed form our café customers to be able to buy and take home wonderful local produce, such as Andrew’s cheese.

Andrew handmade all the cheeses himself from raw cow’s milk, collected from local farmers . It was made in five main flavours: Plain, Garlic & Chive, Nettle (Gold Award, World Cheese Awards 2008) Cumin and Pepper. In addition to being stocked at Rua, Andrew sold  his cheese every Thursday from his stall in Westport, as well at local fairs and heritage days across the country.
Due to ill health, Andrew has made the difficult decision to cease trading. We will very much miss his monthly delivery to our café’s and shop and wish him the very best for the future.

On Friday August 18th, we’ll be celebrating his wonderful cheese with the very last wheel of Carrowholly – (Garlic and Chive variety) throughout our café’s and deli. Our menu will feature a variety of dishes such as a Carrowholly cheese tart, hot sandwiches and our own Mayo Mezze board, which, for the last time, will host a slice of Carrowholly cheese paired with Sean Casey’s quince jam.

We’ll also have some Carrowholly focaccia bread and a take out ‘ploughman’s’ salad box from our delicatessen. All money raised on the day from dishes created using Andrew’s cheese will be donated to local cancer charity, Rock Rose House.