The bar was empty and I went in and sat down but soon customers began to drift in and I listened to the broad Gloucestershire voices talking of the week’s happenings. Presently the conversation turned to the coming ‘Mop’ fair.
So I joined in and asked if a cheese fair was ever held in the town. After the silence that always greets a stranger, my question was answered by a chorus of ‘No’. ‘But I thought Chipping Sodbury was famous for cheese,’ I queried, rather mendaciously. Again I was wrong but, not to be defeated, I asked, ‘Are there any farms around where they still make cheese?’
‘They used to make sum down’t Mr. Martin’s … That were in th’ old man’s time.’ Then after a pause. ‘They are not made no cheese there since I can remember.’ I waited for more. ‘I reckon you’ll ’ave to go Stinchcombe way. Ask Bob Ruddick,’e’ll know. Ay, ask Bob.’
Bob Ruddick, he knew because he worked as a lad on a farm where they made the cheeses and where, for all he knew, they still made ’em. He were pretty certain they did still make ’em and if it weren’t Davis’ Farm then it might be another, for up in the Berkeley Vale was the cheese-making country and if you went up along the Gloucester Road or along under Stinchcombe, you’d be sure to find ones that still made ’em. Though (mind you) there ain’t many of ’em left now … and so, I finished my pint and made for Berkeley.
The scent was hot there and my spirits rose when the barmaid of the ‘Berkeley Arms’ told me of Mrs. Browning’s, not four miles off – and it was there at Actree’s Farm – a stone’s throw from the Bristol-Gloucester road that I found cheese, and peace.
The farm – brick, snug, set down fairly and spaciously among its out-buildings – was a fitting place and Mrs. Browning (like Elizabeth Barrett) a poetess, only of cheeses.
She took me to the dairy and showed me all the implements of her art. The big iron presses and vats and the round wooden troughs – all so ancient and so English and for which few modern substitutes have been found – and then, in turn, into the great garret under the roof beams where stood all the cheeses – great and small, double and single, baby cheeses and giant cheeses – slowly ripening. All earmarked for special customers – many for London clubs – such is Mrs. Browning’s fame.
Then I was told how carefully the cows have to be watched and herded. Should they stray on to a wrong pasture then the cheese is spoiled. Neither must there be too much richness in the milk. The butter-producing cow cannot give cheese milk, mark you.
And then all the questions of temperatures and cultures. No wonder that the weeks of cheese-making mean constant anxiety and little sleep. So I was taken to the kitchen and shown the red and blue cards, many framed on the walls, of prizes gained and, best of all, I was given a taste of Prime Double Gloucester.
What more could man wish for?
IV
By Horace Annesley Vachell
For the everyday, cut-and-come-again cheese I commend with all my heart the Cheddar. Other cheeses have their seasons; the Cheddar, as an adjunct to luncheon and dinner, as a neverfailing good companion to a glass (or two) of vintage port, is seasonable – as the good Mrs. Beeton puts it – all the year round. Living as I do in the West Country, not far from the Cheddar Gorge, I have to confess regretfully that the Cheddar cheese of commerce seldom comes from Cheddar. There is a story – probably apocryphal – of a lorry skidding and upsetting upon one of the green hills of Somerset. Cheddar cheeses made elsewhere rolled into Cheddar. Trippers visiting the Gorge carry away with them miniature cheeses born and bred in Canada. In fact, although it is held to be foolish to carry coals to Newcastle, cheeses are carried to Cheddar!
Nevertheless Cheddar, deliciously creamy, with nothing ‘soapy’ about it, is still made near Cheddar, a village at the foot of the Gorge, perilously overhung by the limestone cliffs. Huge boulders roll down into the gorge, but not one, so far as I know, has crashed into a cheese. Here, too, are the caves.
Cheeses are divided for trade purposes into two classes, hard and soft. Cheddar is hard, the typically pressed cheese, and the most important of its kind produced in this country. Stilton is an unpressed hard cheese, ripened by the aid of the blue mould which grows in veins within it. The best Cheddar is made from whole milk, like Cheshire. Canadian Cheddar does not greatly differ from English or Scotch Cheddar, but it may be manufactured from partially skimmed milk. So far as I can learn, the Cheddar cheese made in the valleys near Cheddar, in Wiltshire and Dorset is never made from partially skimmed milk.
Last October I assisted (in the Pump Room at Bath) at a Cheddar cheese competition, and I carried away with me a fine chunk of the prize-winning cheese of a firm and wax-like consistency, delicately flavoured, about as good as it could be. Why Cheddar varies so much in quality and flavour is easily explained. The best cheese – no matter where it comes from – is made at the right time of year when the pastures on which the cows graze are at their best and richest. Cheese made from milk when the cows are fed on fodder is inferior. One can amplify this crude statement. Certain pastures are so rich in certain grasses that the farmers (although methods are identical) who own these favoured meadows make more delicately flavoured cheeses than their next-door neighbours. A viticulturist can take cuttings from the Cabernet-Sauvignon grape, plant those cuttings on soil similar to the soil of a famous vineyard, employ a wine-maker from that vineyard, and – despite skill and care – is unable to make a wine comparable with any of the ‘first growths’. In the course of centuries something has been taken from and added to the soil of, let us say, the Château Lafite Vineyard by the vine itself. A famous vineyard, in a very true sense, makes itself.
‘Variety is a good thing.’
Be that as it may, Cheddar cheese varies disconcertingly. Stewards of famous clubs acquire great expertise in selecting cheeses; and any young member, who aspires to be a gourmet, is well advised to ask the Great Panjandrum of the Coffee Room what cheese is in season. Brazil nuts are an excellent adjunct to port, but they are only fit to eat when they come fresh from Brazil, free from any taint of rancidity.
Fortunately, thanks to the different sizes of Cheddar, and the time it takes to ripen, it is possible to enjoy this particular cheese all the year round. Unfortunately, however, the ordinary Man in the Street is at the mercy of the tradesman who sells the cheese. I asked a salesman, who invariably is kind enough to consider my palate, if customers (taking them by and large) knew the difference between good, bad and indifferent Cheddar. He assured me, with a twinkle in his eye, that they did not.
With milk retailed at threepence a pint, it is amazing that cheese can be made and sold at a reasonable profit. Happily, I am not concerned with certain trade mysteries. If, as I am informed, it does not pay to make butter and cheese in England provided you can market your milk, how is it that Canadian Cheddar can be sold at elevenpence a pound and New Zealand butter at 1s. 6d. a pound, when Canada is three thousand miles away from the English market and New Zealand fourteen thousand miles?
A