Sorry! This isn't available for the time being - but we're hoping to be able to stock it regularly again in 2010.
Quicke's, based at Newton St Cyres, just north of Exeter, are world famous for their cheddar, and this is the most mature version. The cheese, muslin-wrapped, is matured on wooden shelves for 2 years.
Pasteurised
More about Quickes
Quickes cheese definitely counts as 'artisan', i.e hand-made, but in terms of the people we deal with, they're also one of the larger concerns, with up to 400 tons of Cheddar being made each year, and a staff of around ten. The first time I looked into their biggest cheese store was quite a jaw-dropping moment, row after row of huge racks with hundreds of huge 15 kilo chedars slowly maturing. Qute a sight!
When Sir John Quicke and his wife Prue started making cheddar in the early 70s, really traditional cheese making in this country was perhaps at its lowest ebb. The Quickes instinctively went for the old methods and cloth-wrapped truckles rather than the rindless blocks emerging from big industrial creameries, with a 500-strong dairy herd providing the milk.
Today the firm is under the leadership of John and Prue's daughter Mary, whose focus is on the business of making 'world class cheese'. In The Cheese Shed we stock her 18 month old Extra Mature Cheddar, 2 year Vintage and Oak-Smoked Cheddar, as well as Double Gloucester and a very nice firm Goats Cheese. In addition there's a Red Leicester and a herb-flavoured Cheddar.
