Another summer, another Specialist Cheesemakers Association Farm Visit. Each year a different dairy opens its doors to makers and mongers from all over the country – they flock for the very important Sunday AGM of course, but it’s the tasting and touring, feasting and festivity, cheese-chat and community that really draws the happy campers.
This time it’s the turn of Quicke’s Cheese to host, welcoming the hoards to Home Farm in Newton St Cyres near Exeter. A very potted history of Quicke’s: the land was gifted to the family by Henry VIII, and they’ve been making cheese on their farm since 1540; 14th-generation farmer and cheesemaker Mary Quicke took the helm in 1987 and expanded the business; the day-to-day running has now been passed to her daughter Jane Quicke, while Mary remains thoroughly hands on, part of the land itself and chief cow-whisperer. Quicke’s spans over 2,000 acres of land (though much of it woodland) and now makes up to 200 tonnes of cheese a year (much of it Cheddar).
Once we’ve pitched up alongside the growing number of tents and campervans (one of which is Mary’s, despite living a stone’s throw from the site – all the better to be nearer the fun) we scrub in for the dairy tour with Jane and the cheesemakers. Saturdays are not make-days, so we behold pristine stainless steel on a grand scale as we follow the milk in our mind’s eye from morning delivery to meticulous coagulation, to curd-cutting, machine-milling and Cornish sea salt mixing, before being packed into Cheddar moulds. Meanwhile the drained whey wends its own journey: a sloped chute whisks it off to butter-making quarters. For every cow’s milk Cheddar make, the whey cream can produce between 90 and 120 curls of butter; and goat’s butter is on the menu too, using goat’s milk sourced from small local farms (Quicke’s also produces an excellent clothbound goat’s cheese). Patting the butter into curls is a very specialised skill, with few entrusted with the wooden scotch hands used to craft the slightly salted rolls.
From the compact butter chamber to the vast maturing rooms: sky-high shelves of Cheddar wheels at various stages of ageing. Beautiful constellations and paint palette spatterings cover the clothbound cheeses as they grow natural mould gardens over time. Every cheese is tagged as per the essential tracking system – red means it was made in Vat 1, green in Vat 2, and each displays the make date, whether it’s vegetarian rennet or not, and which starter culture was added. Quicke’s thankfully now use machines to turn the hundreds of cheeses, as there’s no benefit to humans doing this and it’s much more efficient.
Most cheese can be enjoyed, but not all cheeses are created equal, and Jane heads up the very important grading team. Using a cheese iron to extract a taster, she’s looking for flavour and aroma, body and texture, colour and finish. Body is crucial for those that will go on to be Vintage Cheddars – the flavour can be fantastic, but if the cheese is a little sticky or squidgy, these flavours may not withstand ageing and resist developing into something truly sensational. And quality ultimately trumps consistency when it comes to grading. (At Buchanans Cheesemonger, we work with Quicke’s to select cheeses at around 18 months old, with a profile that leans towards fruity, caramel and brothy notes, and more savoury, horseradish flavours close to the rind.) We plot a dream day of grading dozens of cheeses with Jane as we pass the cheese mite extraction machine on the way to lunch.
Following a butter-rich repast, it’s time to tour the farm with Mary, sporting cheerful high-vis as we march forth. The often-lush land and red Devon soil is suffering a hot dry summer, but the vast rolling pastures are a balm to London-dulled eyes. Due to recent heat and lack of rain, the feed has been topped up with silage. Needs must. But great care is put into the cows’ diet, with perennial ryegrass, chicory, salad burnet and white clover all cropping up in the mix. (It may be no coincidence that Mary is a great grower and maker of wild salads, accompanying many an on-site work meeting lunch.) Speaking of a mix, the herd is made up of a whole variety of dairy stock – spanning Scandinavian Red, Kiwi Holstein, Montbeliarde, Kiwi Friesian, Brown Swiss and Jersey – all to find the right balance of hardiness, yield and protein percentage. We watch the girls as they feed in a shadier spot, expertly splashing water across their flanks as a cold shower fix. We must break the hypnosis of wide eyes and flicking tails to head back to the dairy site, but stop to admire the new slurry lagoon en route.
As an amuse-bouche to dinner, we speed-taste cheeses in various phases of experimentation, development and/or maturation from visiting cheesemakers for both friendly feedback and fun, before flopping on hay bales with refilling cups of local beer in hand. Though it’s flutes of sparkling cider that await us in the Feasting Shed, an elegant pet-nat style from Devon maker Find & Foster (the founder of which Mary mentored, naturally) and we toast to the hosts and all who contributed to the meal. Or rather the outrageous medieval banquet: great legs of rosy lamb, hunks of pork with gelatinous crackling, delicate mackerel flaking from the bone, salt-roasted potatoes with fondant centres, domes of crunchy slaw, bowls of dressed leaves, and focaccia and flatbreads perfect for a final scarpetta. West country ale and English wine help wash it all down, and the bottles are steadily emptied around the campfire into the night, woodsmoke clinging to revellers. Then it’s a bleary-eyed breakfast of strong coffee and bacon buns – ballast for the AGM – as we reflect on the generosity of the hosts and their enthusiasm for education, engagement with the land, quality produce, breaking bread together (always with butter and cheese), and general merriment.
