As we wait for declarations from across the channel of what the 2005 wine harvest holds, it turns out we have a very special vintage of our own to celebrate. Last year’s warm, wet spring may not have suited holidaymakers, but it was near-perfect for cows, which had some of the lushest, greenest pastures to graze on in living memory. And a happy cow makes for happy milk.
Nowhere is that more important than for the guardians of traditional farmhouse cheesemaking in the West Country, where cheddar is made much as it always has been, using local milk that is curdled, cut, milled and salted by hand before being stored for at least nine months on the farm. This lengthy maturing means that only now will we see the first batches from last spring’s milk.
Of course, cheddar can be – and is – made anywhere in the world. Although it took its name from the Somerset town, it is defined by the process whereby the curd is cut, stacked and turned to drain away all the whey. But as anyone unfortunate enough to have tasted the Australian variety knows, all cheddar is not the same. What makes West Country farmhouse cheddar so special is that it is the closest we British come to the French concept of terroir – in this case the idea that a producer’s cheese tastes the way it does because of the location of the farm where it was made. There are 14 farmers in Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall entitled to make West Country farmhouse cheddar (the “West Country farmhouse” is the important bit – it differentiates it from mass-market cheddars made from homogenised milk, and its status is protected, like Parma ham or Champagne), and their product will vary not just because of variations in the way they handle their curds, but because the cows have fed on different pastures, and the cheese picks up different natural flora and bacilli in the air.
Simon Clapp’s family has been farming in Brue Valley, in Somerset, since 1538, and making cheese since the Fifties. He produces 1,000 tonnes of vintage cheddar a year – a tiny proportion of the 350,000 tonnes consumed in the UK – which he sells under the West Country label at Waitrose and Booths supermarkets. “Being on a farm, we have all this country air wafting around,” he says. “A closed creamery will only get out what they have put in, but we get what we put in, plus a bit. The flora in the air will change through the year and vary from farm to farm. That’s what makes our cheeses so individual.”
At Westcombe Dairy in the Batcombe Vale of Somerset, Tom Calver is undergoing his Man from Del Monte moment. Randolph Hodgson, the owner of Neal’s Yard Dairy, who’s done more than anyone to bring the glories of British cheese to a wider audience, is making one of his bimonthly visits, selecting which cheeses he will sell in his London shops. Tom and his father converted from block cheddar production to traditional unpasteurised “rounds” in the Nineties, and they have caught Hodgson’s eye. One of the joys of unpasteurised cheddar – or frustrations, depending on how you look at it – is that the scope for variation can be much more marked. Hodgson will taste one cheese from each day’s production, looking out for just the right balance of flavour and acidity. “The difficulty is predicting how it will taste in six months’ time when it’s on the counter,” he says. “There are a million and one variables.” His favourite cheddars are Keen’s, which tends to be “grassier, stickier, wetter”, Montgomery – “drier, fruitier, savoury and rich” – and, of course, Westcombe, “which is still evolving, so I wouldn’t want to characterise it yet. What we are tasting today is totally different from six months ago.”
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And, of course, a world away from Cathedral City and the like.