Secrets over the Severn (Filed: 20/03/2004)

Welsh artisan cheeses stand comparison with the best in Europe - all they need is someone to shout about them. Tamasin Day-Lewis gets out her foghorn
 

Tyrophilia, or love of cheese, has been a Welsh characteristic since Tudor times. In Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, Ford proclaims: "I will rather trust a Fleming with my butter, Parson Hugh the Welshman with my cheese, an Irishman with my aqua vitae bottle or a thief to walk my ambling gelding than my wife with herself."

With that in mind, I set off for Wales in search of the best examples of farmhouse cheesemaking and found some outstanding unpasteurised cheeses that go way beyond the national staple, Caerphilly.

My trip led me to believe that some of the great British cheeses are Welsh, but the Welsh have not been much good at letting us know about them. If they are keeping the best for themselves, so be it, but the cheesemakers I visited do sell from their websites and several of them supply the better delis and cheese shops in England.

The Welsh have a lot more than leeks and laverbread to shout about. There is Teifi, Celtic Promise, Llangloffan, Granston Mature, Granston Blue, Lammas and Beltane, Perl Wen and Perl Las, Llanboidy and Saval. What's more, all these are raw-milk cheeses made on small farms, some by the elder statesmen of the Welsh cheese fraternity, others by an impressive band of young pretenders.

Our first stop is in Carmarthenshire, at Sue and Huw Jones's farm, where a clutch of artisan cheesemakers congregate. The Jones's Llanboidy is a rich, salty 18-week-old cheese, made from unpasteurised milk from their herd of rare Red Poll cattle.

They are a beautiful bunch of auburn-coated beasts and, Sue assures me, no one else in Europe is making cheese from them. Most people have moved away from the old breeds to Friesians and Holsteins. "I wanted to make something that would keep me on the farm," she says. "There were no artisan cheeses in Wales then, so I went for a hard cheese so there would be no panic if I couldn't sell it."

Sue Hilditch of Caws Celtica has brought a beautiful basket of cheeses with her, made from unpasteurised ewe's milk. Although only in her fourth year of production, she has won gold medals at the British Cheese Awards each year. Her flock of 200 Friesland sheep are grazed on chemical-free pastures and watered from an ancient holy well.

She describes her Lammas as something like a Pecorino and her five-month-old Beltane as similar to Manchego. The Lammas is butterscotchy, nutty, clean-tasting and very dry. The Beltane is sharper, with a hint of oats and nettles. Both are exceptional cheeses with a degree of subtlety and quiet sophistication.

Next we meet Carwyn Adams from Caws Cenarth, whose family began to make Caerphilly before the Second World War. Adams hands me a sample of organic, unpasteurised Caerphilly which is churned by hand from his herd of Friesian and Brown Swiss cows. It has a wonderful mildly acidic lemony echo.

We also try his Perl Wen, which starts off like Caerphilly but is then ripened for seven weeks like a Brie. The cheese is richly creamy and pungent. Adams is also working on a blue, Perl Las. "I first tried to make it like Stilton but have changed it to something much tangier and more gutsy." It is still too salty, but a spot of fine tuning will make it a very fine, buttery, blue.

Leon Downey declares that he will "never, ever make a cheese from pasteurised milk. I'll give up and move to France rather than do that." Downey is the founding father of artisan Welsh cheesemakers. He and his wife Joan started making cheese in a bucket on the Aga at his dairy at Llangloffan, near Fishguard, 27 years ago. Before that, Downey had been principal viola player with the Hallé orchestra in Manchester.

We try the couple's Llangloffan Farmhouse cheeses, Granston Mature and Granston Blue and their Red Cheshire. All are full- flavoured, full-bodied and complex. These are exceptionally fine cheeses. Downey's co-pioneer is a Dutchman, John Savage, whom we visit the following morning in the hills of Llandysul. His cheeses are still made in traditional teak vats with unpasteurised milk from a single Friesian herd.

They are making butter for market when we arrive and Celtic Promise, a Caerphilly-style cheese which is ripened for six weeks. A pungent, washed-rind specimen, it is the only Welsh cheese to have been made supreme champion at the British Cheese Awards. "In the summer, it would be stinkier, more like a Pont-l'Evêque or a Port Salut," Savage tells us. His Teifi is a four-month-old strong, sharp, slightly sour cheese which he says melts like Gruyère when it is cooked.

Welsh farmhouse cheese-making is clearly enjoying something of a renaissance. It just needs someone to shout about it more loudly on the English side of the Severn.