The land of raw milk and honey

Raw milk has been vilified in the press and by food agencies and competitor industries for decades, but its superior taste and health benefits demand we take a second look,

- Tom Parker Bowles

YOU never forget your first sip. Of raw milk that is, fresh from the cow, simply filtered, cooled and bottled. No pasteurisation, homogenisation or standardisation. Meaning it still contains the full complement of vitamins, minerals and natural digestive enzymes. As well as providing the most lusciously creamy mouthful of pure dairy delight; rich, sweet and voluptuously full bodied. If the average supermarket pint is Dorothy in Kansas, all drab monochrome, then raw milk is the moment she steps into Oz and the screen erupts into dazzling Technicolour. For someone who was ambivalent about milk, the raw stuff was a revelation.

And that revelation came courtesy of Steven Hook, a fourth-generation Sussex dairy farmer, way back in 2011 at Selfridges, in London. A manager of its Food Hall had tried his raw milk at the Abergavenny Food Festival, fallen in love and, after a few meetings sorting out the legalities (the law stated that raw milk could ‘only be sold from the farm premises’), it agreed that Mr Hook could rent some floor space in the Food Hall, install his own raw-milk vending machine, and sell direct to his customers. And it was from that machine, after plugging my coin into the slot and filling up my own glass bottle, I took my first taste. The punters couldn’t get enough. Selfridges was happy. Mr Hook was delighted. But then the trouble began.