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Blessed are the Cheesemakers
Above: Cheesemaker Jamie Montgomery in the Montgomery’s cheddar maturing room, where 5,000 cheeses age gracefully.
Johnny Acton visits three Somerset cheesemakers whose passion for their product and for traditional methods are producing some world-class cheese.
MONTGOMERY’S
Traditional Somerset cheese-making at its very best.
Montgomery’s is the aristocrat of the Somerset cheddar world. Its Friesian cows graze on Camelot Hill, where King Arthur reputedly had his seat and where Ethelred the Unready established a royal mint in the eleventh century. With so much history nearby, it’s no surprise that Montgomery’s adheres to traditional methods of cheese-making. For example, the cheddar is made with unpasteurised milk, and calves’ rennet is used to separate the curds from the whey.
The firm buys its starter cultures from Barber’s, while Richard Green from Green’s of Glastonbury grades the cheese. Nevertheless, Jamie Montgomery’s pride in what he does is unmistakable. It is also well justified. His cheddar routinely wins international prizes (at the 2008 World Cheese Awards, it came first in the mature and extra-mature categories) and he has been described as the best cheese maker on earth.
Jamie oozes connoisseurship. He refuses to abandon traditional methods because, he tells me: ‘If we were to change anything, the curd might sense a difference.’
Jamie oozes connoisseurship. He refuses to abandon traditional methods because, he tells me: ‘If we were to change anything, the curd might sense a difference.’ He likens the production of top-quality cheddar to wine-making, because both require an obsession with detail, struggles with acidity and long, carefully monitored maturation periods. The comparison becomes even more vivid in the maturing room, where 5,000 cylinders of cheddar age gracefully. The younger ones are yellow, while the older ones resemble lichen-covered stones.
I leave with a vast block of year-old cheese and a tip. ‘You should try eating this with a glass of pomona,’ says Jamie, referring to a local speciality that bears a similar relationship to apples, in the same way that port does to grapes. ‘It’s the perfect companion to cheddar,’ he adds.
When I get home, I find we’re fresh out of pomona, but the Montgomery’s is good enough to eat on its own. It is the subtlest and crumbliest of the three cheeses I bring back from Somerset, with a complex, old-fashioned flavour.
GREEN’S OF GLASTONBURY
Almost a century of cheddar-making results in an award-winning cheese.
It is hard to imagine anywhere more quintessentially West Country than Newton Farm. On one side looms mystical Glastonbury Tor, on the other is the site of the famous music festival, and the man showing me around has an accent broader than the Somerset Levels. Richard Green has been the firm’s cheese maker for 26 years, although he still has two years to go before overtaking his father, who preceded him in the post.
Richard explains that the monks of Glastonbury Abbey were maturing cheese in the caves of Cheddar Gorge in medieval times. Green’s itself was set up by the family matriarch just after the First World War; she learned the art as a dairymaid.
In the production area, the first thing I see is a pair of Green’s employees ‘cheddaring’. This is the process of hand-forming the curds into shoe box-sized blocks. These are continually stacked and restacked in different orders until they have been compressed to around half their original height. The blocks are then placed into moulds and subjected to mechanical pressure for 48 hours.
Finally, the young cheeses are wrapped in cloth and transferred to the maturing room, which is cool and cavernous and filled with a faint but delicious aroma of mushrooms. In an attempt to duplicate the conditions found by the medieval monks in the Cheddar Caves, the temperature is held between 10C and 12C, with humidity at 88 per cent. The cheese that emerges is sweet, fruity and delectable.
BARBER’S
Home to the last remaining traditional UK cheese starter culture.
Ostensibly, Barber’s cheddar factory at Maryland Farm near Castle Cary couldn’t be more different from Green’s and Montgomery’s. It operates on a much larger scale and is in another league in terms of utilising technology to make its cheese. It isn’t homely or rustic, but Barber’s has something that its neighbours – and indeed all of the nation’s other cheddar makers – don’t have: the mother culture.
The firm holds 14 strains of starter culture, all of them more than 50 years old. It is these elixirs, rich in bacteria native to the West Country, that are responsible for the complex, rounded flavours of Barber’s cheddars. They are housed in a laboratory that is about as accessible as Fort Knox. My guide, Dave, shakes his head when I ask if it would be possible to see it. ‘We’re covered in phages!’ he exclaims, referring to everyday bacteria that could easily corrupt the delicate starter cultures.
The shop floor is packed with gleaming, bespoke machinery, which is, reassuringly, dependent on human expertise. Dave frequently reaches into a machine to check the consistency of the developing product. It could be sent to the lab for analysis but, by the time the results return, several tonnes of prototype cheese would have passed through the system.
I am led, finally, into the boardroom for lunch with general managers Charlie and Giles Barber, who oversee the family enterprise that has just celebrated its 175th anniversary. It is fitting, then, that the centrepiece of our meal is a block of 1833 Reserve Cheddar.
Giles and Charlie are open about the fact that they are engaged in a rather different business to that of Green’s and Montgomery’s. But this cheese, which accounts for only one per cent of the firm’s output, is as good as anything produced by their neighbours: creamy, strong and with a tangy aftertaste.
Charlie has one last thing to show me. We drive up a nearby hillside and sit on a bench, with cheddar country resplendent beneath us. The fields are implausibly lush and there are numerous cows munching on the West Country goodness. ‘This is our real secret,’ admits Charlie.
TASTING NOTES
Fortnum & Mason’s savoury grocery buyer Sam Rosen-Nash selects the perfect chutneys for three cheddars:
Montgomery’s
Montgomery’s is a drier, flakier
farmhouse cheddar, perfect to partner F&M Florentine Chutney, where the sweetness of the dried fruit coddles and complements this master cheese. £5.75, 325g.
Green’s of Glastonbury
Full of British farmhouse flavour,
Our Fig Chutney masters this beast of a cheddar, knocking back its sharper edges, yet in no way dominating it. £5,75, 325g.
Barber’s
The crunchy, lightly pickled vegetables in the Our Fortnum Pickle are a great contrast to this creamy, smooth cheese, while not overpowering it. £3.50, 325g.
Photography by Cristian Barnett