Quickes Goats Cheese
Renowned makers Quickes drew on their cheddar-making experience for this goats' cheese, created with the help of Val Bines, who offered her expert help and advice to Mary and the team over many years. The cheese, matured for 6-7 months, won Best Goats' Cheese in the 2009 British Cheese Awards - from a field of 127!
Pasteurised, vegetarian
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.