This month I caught up with someone who's one of Westcountry cheese's biggest characters, Mary Quicke, head of the dairy that bears her family name, based just north of Exeter. Passion is an over-used word in relation to food producers, but in Mary's case it's very apt; in fact, 'passionate' doesn't begin to describe her irrepressible enthusiasm for cheese and the job of making it.

I'd been reading Patrick Rance's Great British Cheese Book, and wanted to ask Mary how the cheese scene had changed since this campaigning book (Rance thought that 'real' cheesemaking was at a low ebb, but could be saved) came out in 1982.  She recalled that when her father began cheesemaking in the 70s there was: "no awareness of cheese issues, and - really - zero appreciation of traditional cheese.  It was a blind rush to conformity - things just had to look smart and be in a nice packet".  There was no understanding of cheese, Mary feels, because - in part - people had no language to describe cheese and it's different attributes (a preoccupation of hers, to which she returned). 

 
The influence of people like Patrick Rance was key in turning the situation around, along with Juliet Harbutt, founder of the British Cheese Awards ("as a Master of Wine, she knew how important it was to find ways to talk about cheese") and Randolph Hodgson of Neal's Yard Dairy ("he realised that you had to really interest people in cheese, you had to tell its story").

A massive enthusiasm for the job shines out; also, her constant search for the highest possible standards - the pursuit of excellence that characterises all the best craftsmanship.  She has a vision of how the cheese should be - "complex, with a long finish, not a single spike of flavour that hits and is then gone" - and this isn't a response to demand, it's just a question of her standards, what she's trying to achieve.

And what's it all for?  Fun, says Mary - an F word (not Gordon Ramsey's ...) which keeps coming up, and it's refreshing that in the Quicke philosophy, great food and great taste isn't a matter of exclusivity and furrowed brows. She's having fun making her cheese, striving to make it better ("my amazing, lovely job") and sees great food as a life-enhancing Good Thing. "I want people to go 'wow!' with every mouthful. We're all going to die, so while we're here we might as well be fully alive to the gloriousness of life!".

Twenty years on from Patrick Rance's book, there will be around 800 cheeses at the British Cheese Awards in a few weeks time - a complete transformation in the supply side, which has gone hand-in-hand with a surge in interest from the public. Mary says that people are starting to take the word 'value' back from the supermarkets: rather than meaning merely 'cheap', people are starting to value great cheese in itself.  And why not? After all, cheese is fun!

You'll no doubt be delighted to learn that the Cheese Shed Newsletters - those elegant gems of dairy-related literature - are now available in a handy online archive.  If you've forgotten which Two Great Women made the Nine Great Cheeses, why there was definitely No Compromise In The Cheese Triangle, or what on earth the World's First Cheese Lighthouse was, never fear!

The answer's here.