COUNTRY CHEESES TOPSHAM

By the time the shortages of the war ceased, many cheese makers had moved on to other things. Prior to the war there were over five hundred registered cheese making farms in the South West. After the war there were only fifty. The popularity of supermarkets is also culpable for the decline in artisan cheese making. The fashion for vacuum-packed ‘convenience foods’ hit an all time high and many people became accustomed to the unchallenging, mediocre flavours of foods that were manufactured and mass produced.

We want to reverse this trend and introduce people to the old fashioned flavours of ‘Real’ cheese. The more people who taste the stunning examples of artisan cheese making in this area, the more people will go out of their way to buy it and the more the demand increases, more and more farmers can be persuaded to diversify and experiment with using their milk to make cheese. And most importantly, the variety and accessibility of exceptional ‘real’ cheeses will increase, bringing one of the nation’s most traditional, varied and nutritious foods back into our diets. We started Country Cheeses 20 years ago with a table in Tavistock’s Pannier Market, six cheeses, and loads of enthusiasm for eating ‘real’ cheese.

We now have three shops, one in Tavistock, Topsham and Totnes, where we sell in the region of a hundred different cheeses, all British and mostly from the Westcountry. We feel ourselves to be very fortunate as we deal with the cream of cheesemakers who are driven to produce the best cheeses you could find anywhere, and who are also prepared to produce cheeses especially for us.