Another '50% off' Special Offer!
And of course this one features the delicious cheeses made at Westcombe. Buy any Westcombe Cheddar, Westcombe Red, Duckett's Caerphilly, Wedmore or Smoked Wedmore before the end of May and you'll get 50% off the normal price of those cheeses (no code needed - it should just work). I'm too good to you, really I am.
Note: The offer doesn't apply to cheese in selection boxes or wedding cakes. Even my benevolence has its limits.
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Westcombe & Ducketts: Two Dairies, One Roof
 In a large, spotless room four white-suited people are busy working. Two of them are at a massive vat making Westcombe Cheddar - some of the most traditional cheddar made anywhere. They're cutting the draining curd into big blocks and stacking it all along the sides: this is the actual 'cheddaring' process itself.
Across the room the other two are busy at a smaller vat making a quite different cheese: lighter, saltier and more moist. Unlike the cheddar, which will need to mature for at least a year, this one could be ready to eat in just a few days. This is Duckett's Caerphilly.
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 Westcombe Dairy (and Ducketts) draw on the milk of three farms run by Richard Calver. Richard started cheesemaking about 15 years ago - although cheese has been made on the Westcombe site since the 1880s - and got together with fellow makers Keens and Montgomerys in 2002 to form what the Slow Food movement calls a Presidium, devoted to protecting traditional artisan foods, in this case Somerset cheddar.
Traditional in this case means that unpasteurised milk is used, and must come from the maker's own farm; animal - not vegetarian - rennet is used; the cheddaring process is done by hand; cheeses are then clothbound and matured for at least a year. In addition to Westcombe Cheddar, they also make Westcombe Red, a 'Red Leicester' style of cheese which was for a number of years the only unpasteurised, handmade vesion of this cheese in the country.
Today cheesemaking is in the capable hands of Richard's son Tom (seen above). Tom spent a number of years working for Randolph Hodgson at Neal's Yard Dairy before coming back to look after the marketing of their cheeses: he's now taken over the making itself.
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 Chris Duckett's family had a farm at nearby Wedmore, and started making their Caerphilly in the 1920s, with Chris himself active since the 60s. He devoted himself to preserving the 'genuine article' - something that was in serious danger of disappearing - and this work was recognised in 2008 when he recieved a special award at the British Cheese Awards.
In time Chris gave up the farming and moved his making to Westcombe, creating this unique arrangement where two great makers share the same space. The next chapter in the Ducketts story came a couple of years ago with the arrival of Jemima (seen here at the cheese press), an Oxford-based research biochemist who'd been to work with Jamie Montgomery and become hooked!
To cut a long story short, Chris has now retired and Jemima, now relocated to Somerset, is carrying the great name of Duckett's Caerphilly forward into the 21st century. She's still making his Wedmore - Caerphilly with chives - and the smoked version, but, keen not to stand still, has added an unpasteurised Caerphilly and even an 'aged' version, which is matured for a couple of months so that a rind forms and the flavour develops.
Incidentally, watching Jemima and Andy work I was struck again by what hard graft cheesemaking is: in this case hours of stirring, cutting and piling curd, then filling and stacking moulds - and all the time you're bent double over the vat.
As Jemima said with feeling: "when we say it's hand made, we mean it".
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Stop Press!
1: Behold the Wall Of Cheese
It has to be an internet first.
 2: Fathers' Day Approacheth
Sat 21st June. We'll be doing a special box and I'll give you a Gentle Nudge a little nearer the time.
That's all folks.
Pip pip!
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