But now the revolution in bar food has prompted a Dales pub to join the Yorkshire Post's Uniquely Yorkshire campaign to protect real Wensleydale, and produce a new range of dishes that feature the Hawes-based cheese.
Wensleydale Dairy Products, the main producer of the cheese, is applying to the European Union for Protected Designation of Origin.
If granted, it would mean nobody outside the dale could make a cheese called Real Yorkshire Wensleydale.
The Craven Arms at Appletreewick, which features in the Good Beer Guide, has produced a new Yorkshire menu to accompany its refurbished dining room – an oak-framed cruck barn, believed to be Yorkshire's first since Tudor times.
Chef and manager Ashley Crampton said: "I read of the Yorkshire Post campaign to protect Wensleydale cheese from outsiders while designing the new menu.
"We have always used local produce and it occurred to me that featuring our local cheese would both lend it support and go down well with diners."
Soon Wensleydale devotees will be able to include their favourite cheese in all three courses at the Wharfedale pub.
Starters will include locally-produced black pudding with an apple and cider sauce topped with Wensleydale cheese melt.
Then, to follow, either rabbit or chicken wrapped in bacon with Wensleydale and cranberry cheese plus cranberry sauce.
For dessert, diners can enjoy Folly Ale's Executioner Bitter fruit cake served with lashings of Yorkshire butter and a side order of Wensleydale cheese.
Mr Crampton added that his support for our Uniquely Yorkshire campaign had to make business sense if it was to be sustainable.
"In this trade there is little room for sentiment," he said. 
"Get it wrong and diners will vote with their feet.
"But as a chef I am always looking for different combinations and for me when it comes to Wensleydale cheese there is only one place that can make it properly and that is Wensleydale itself. 
"I honestly believe
you can tell the difference and that's why we're
supporting the move to protect it."