COUNTRY CHEESES TOTNES

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. The art of cheese making was nearly lost in this country. Years ago, cheese making was an art that stayed in the family environment, passed from one generation to the next.

A farmhouse cheese was one that was made on the farm where the milk was produced and the cheese was really just a method of preserving milk. However, during the Second World War milk was classed as a national commodity and farmhouse cheesemaking ceased, all soft cheese production stopped and milk was transported to factories to be made into hard cheese, again as a method of preserving large quantities of milk. 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.What we do is a way of life rather than a job. In all three shops we feel very much part of the community and we get a great feeling of excitement when we uncover new cheeses for our customers. It’s wonderful to see the look of amazement and delight when people realise for the first time that the array of cheeses before them are mainly from the Westcountry, and also that the flavours and textures are so diverse and fantastic.