The Cheddar Gorge Cheese Company has recently won Best Cheddar In Show at the annual World Cheese Awards. Gerry Brooke takes a look at a centuries-long tradition.

ON winning the Best Cheddar in Show award, company owner John Spencer said: "It seems fitting that the best Cheddar has returned to its birthplace – Cheddar in Somerset."

"As a small artisan maker competing against producers from all over the world we were thrilled to receive the accolade."

It's five years ago since John took over the assets of the old Cheddar Gorge Cheese Company, determined to restore locally-made cheese to its rightful place on the country's dinner tables.

Aiming to produce an authentic Cheddar that truly reflected its heritage, he decided to use unpasteurised milk drawn from one farm in the village.

As was the case long ago, the true nature of the lush local pastures is reflected in the product.

John's wife Katherine is in charge of all technical and quality issues.

All the Cheddar cheeses are hand made in an open vat in a small dairy by one of three cheesemakers and, although there is a recipe to follow, each one is slightly different.

Reflecting traditional practices, it's more than three days from the milk filling the vat until the cheese is put into store.

The cheeses are then dressed in traditional cheesecloth and, while maturing over the next 10 to 16 months, they are turned regularly.

This care and attention means that when ready to eat – either as mature, extra mature or vintage – the flavour and texture of authentic Cheddar cheese bursts through.

Eighteen months ago, the company started maturing some of its cheeses in the cool and constant temperature of Cheddar caves.

It's a finishing touch usually added to classier foreign cheeses like Roquefort, probably the world's most expensive, using a technique dating back to Roman times.

"We use milk from Cheddar, hand make it in the village and we now mature the cheese in the caves – it realises the aim I had when I arrived," says John proudly.

Cheddar's fame as a cheesemaker stretches back many centuries.

When King Henry II purchased a quantity for his court he proclaimed it the "best in England".

Four hundred years later, the historian Camden spoke of it as, "excellent and prodigious".

By the 17th century, Cheddar cheese was in great demand, not just in Somerset where they were "bespoken before they are made", but throughout the whole country.

In the 18th century, when the writer Daniel Defoe visited Cheddar, he described the villagers as "cow-keepers" and related in detail their co-operative system of dairying.

Pointing out that the local cheese was twice as expensive as Cheshire, he was still complimentary enough to name it "the best cheese that England affords, if not the whole world".

In earlier times, milk was obtained from ewes and goats, the normal milking animals of Norman England.

Cows were kept purely for breeding oxen to pull heavy wagons and ploughs.

Herds of "milch cows", as they were known, only came into their own as large acres of pasturage and new town markets made keeping them worthwhile.

Large quantities of cheese were then traded at numerous country and city fairs.

By the turn of the 18th century, John Billingsley, the Mendip agricultural reformer, wrote: "The cows of this district are intended chiefly for the purposes of cheese-making."

It was Joseph Harding from Marksbury who lectured on improved methods of cheese-making, who was responsible for laying down uniform standards.

By the time of his death in 1876, large- scale cheese making for the rapidly developing Victorian cities had really come into its own.

It was his son, Henry, who took the Cheddar cheese-making secrets to the newly-emerging countries of New Zealand and Australia.

This was the heyday of the big cheese.

In 1839, one was made at West Pennard near Glastonbury as a wedding present for Queen Victoria. Into it went one day's whole milking from 737 cows.

When it was finished, it weighed half a ton and was nearly 9ft in diameter.

The monster cheese went on show in London, but when it came to be consumed it was found to be inedible and ended up as pigs' food.

Cheeses were exhibited at all the big shows, including the Mid Somerset which started in 1862 and the famous Frome Cheese Show which started in 1878.

Some of them, up to 3ft high and weighing two hundredweight, took up to five years to mature.

The last commercial giant was made at Castle Cary just before World War I, although they have been produced since for special occasions, such as Harvest Homes.

Traditional truckles, about 10lb in weight, were made in numerous farmhouse cheese rooms.

They were coloured on the outside with reddle (or redding), a red powder quarried until fairly recently at Winford.

The finished cheeses were collected and then carted countrywide.

When villages were finally linked by branch and main lines to the major cities, distribution became a lot easier.

With the advent of tourism, compact 1lb cheeses were made for direct sale.

During World War II, farmhouse production almost died out.

In the early Fifties there were just 47 producers, and this number fell rapidly throughout the Sixties and Seventies.

But Cheddar, surely the king of cheeses, remains an unbroken tradition stretching back 800 years or more.

Cheese from the Cheddar Gorge Cheese Company is available either direct from their shop in Cheddar, via its website (www.cheddargorgecheeseco.co.uk), or from a number of small specialist retailers throughout the country.

Cheesy facts

● Cheddar, the most popular cheese in the UK, accounts for more than half of the country's £1.9 billion annual sales of cheese.

● Despite the English name, the cheese is made in many other countries, including Ireland, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden and Canada.

● Other well-known Somerset Cheddar cheeses include Keen's, with a strong tang, and Montgomery's, with an appley after-taste.

● In the time of King Henry II (1154-1189), Cheddar cheese was sold at a farthing (a quarter of a penny) per pound.

● Despite its high fat content, the cheese is a good source of vitamin B12.

● "Cheddaring" refers to a step in the process where, after heating, the curd is kneaded with salt, cut into cubes to drain away the whey and then stacked and turned.

● The curds and whey are separated using rennet, an enzyme produced from the stomachs of new-born calves. In vegetarian Cheddar, however, the enzymes are derived from plants.

● Vintage Cheddar needs to mature at a constant temperature for up to 15 months.

● Although the European Union (EU) recognises "West Country Farmhouse Cheddar" as having protected designation of origin (PDO) status, the Cheddar name itself is not protected.

● To meet EU standards, Cheddar cheese must be made in the traditional manner using local ingredients from just four counties – Somerset, Devon, Dorset or Cornwall. The Slow Food Movement, however, says only cheese made in Somerset using traditional methods – raw milk, traditional animal rennet and cloth wrapping – has the right to call itself Cheddar.

● In some parts of the US and Canada, annatto, extracted from the tropical achiote tree, is used to give the cheese a deep orange colour. The giant US producer Kraft uses a combination of annatto and oleoresin paprika, an oil made from paprika.

● Cheddar is sometimes packaged in black wax, but more common is larded cloth which allows the cheese to breathe.

● Vermont Cheddar is the nearest of any North American cheese to authentic English Cheddar.

● Australian Cheddar is known as "tasty cheese."

● A giant Wisconsin Cheddar cheese weighing 34,951lb (15,853kg) produced for the New York World's Fair in 1964, required the equivalent of the daily milk production of 16,000 cows.