Cheddar cheese. You know it. You’ve eaten so much of it. There are whole sections of supermarkets dedicated to it. It accounts for more than half the UK’s cheese market. It’s the second most popular cheese in the US, after mozzarella, but you’ll find it all over the world – from Australia to Japan to South Africa. And it all started in a tiny Somerset village.
Originating from Cheddar, an hour’s drive from Bristol, the nearby Gorge and its caves offered the perfect humidity for maturing the cheese. In fact, traditionally, cheddar had to be made within 30 miles of Wells Cathedral, but unlike say Parmigiano Reggiano or Gorgonzola, today holds no protected status. Which is probably, alongside with its versatility, why it’s so popular.
Only ‘West Country Farmhouse Cheddar’ can be made from local milk within Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall using traditional methods. Today, there’s only one company making cheddar in Cheddar, and that’s the Cheddar Gorge Cheese Company – which was only established in 2003, but only uses fresh local unpasteurised milk, and even matures some cheese in the nearby caves.
How did cheddar become so popular?
Cheddar went from its humble West Country beginnings to the world’s most popular cheese largely due to one man. A 19th-century Somerset dairyman, Joseph Harding was responsible for introducing new equipment that sped up the process of cheddar-making.
His ‘revolving breaker’ for curd cutting saved a lot of manual effort, and the ‘Joseph Harding method’ became the first modern system for cheddar production – and with it, he was able to quickly introduce cheddar to Scotland and North America, while his sons took cheddar cheese production to Australia and New Zealand.
It was a little later that cheddar established its vice-like grip on Britain’s cheese production, however. Almost all other cheese production in the country was wiped out during the Second World War so a single “government cheddar” was produced as part of rationing. Stilton, Red Leicester and the like have never been able to recover.
What is Cheddar like today?
Outside of its cheese production, or its lack of, Cheddar is best known for its Gorge. 400ft deep and 3 miles long, from its craggy cliff-top walks to rock climbing and cave diving – one home to the oldest complete skeleton ever found in Britain, Cheddar Man – is a sight to behold.
The last time I went to the village, I described the busy village centre as like “a seaside town without a beach,” bought scrumpy from a milk carton and drove home. But Cheddar proves to be a popular destination for many – with colourful, cosy and somewhat cheesy cafes, gift shops, pubs and takeaways to visit.
There’s the adorable Lion Rock Tea Rooms for afternoon tea; the oldest cheddar cheese shop in the world, Original Cheddar Cheese company, from 1870; a pub lunch at The Bath Arms; and, on the other side of the village from the Gorge, the Cheddar Reservoir for fishing and birdwatching.