Snowdonia Truffle Trove

The Snowdonia Cheese Company was established in 2001 with the aim of creating a luxury range of Welsh cheeses. The colourful wax-coated truckles are attractive and easy to spot and have won numerous awards. Based in North Wales and the rugged beauty of Snowdonia, the company uses only the finest (pasteurised) milk and additional ingredients to produce a distinctive range of cheeses. Options range from Black Bomber – an extra-mature Cheddar – through to Red Devil, a classic Red Leicester warmed with a hit of chilli. There is also the award-winning Pickle Power – a mature Cheddar with a pickled onion tang and Ruby Mist – another mature Cheddar with warming hints of Port and Brandy. Confronted by a limited choice on a recent trip to Wales I went for Truffle Trove, which is a mature cheddar embedded with small pieces of black truffle, an excellent compliment to the cheese.

Hafod Cheddar

Hafod is an unpasteurised Cheddar made by hand at Holden Farm Dairy on Bwlchwernen Fawr, Wales’ longest certified organic dairy farm. Sharp but subtle, Hafod has a rich texture and a complex and earthy flavour – perfect for adding to Welsh rarebit or eating with a slice of apple. The Hafod recipe was developed by Sam and Rachel Holden in 2005 after they were inspired by a recipe from Dora Saker’s 1917 book Practical Cheddar Cheese-making. The 75 Ayrshire cows on the farm produce a milk that is perfect for high quality cheesemaking due to its rich and buttery texture.

Hafod cheese started life in 2007 when farmer Patrick Holden joined forces with his son, Sam and daughter-in-law Rachel, who moved back to West Wales from London with the dream of making a truly special cheese. The origins of Hafod go back further, to the late Dougal Campbell, a close friend of Patrick’s. Dougal learned to make cheese in the Swiss Alps before moving to West Wales in the early 1980s, where he started making a cheese called T’yn Grug using milk from both his own herd and from Patrick’s. He went on to teach cheesemaking to several people and his recipe formed the starting point from which Sam and Rachel eventually developed Hafod.

The cheese is made with raw milk. Ayrshire milk is rich in butterfat and protein and is widely regarded as being ideally suited to cheesemaking. Although the recipe for the cheese is very similar to that of a Cheddar, Hafod has distinctive rich, buttery, nutty flavours – indicative of the Swiss origins of the original recipe. The cheese is made in 10kg rounds, cloth bound and matured to 12 months, during which time it develops a traditional mould rind.

Caerphilly

Caerphilly is a hard, crumbly white cheese that originated in the area around Caerphilly, S Wales and is thought to have been created for local coal miners. It has subsequently been suggested that the cheese's salt content helped manual workers and can be cut into wedges and does not dry out in the conditions underground. Caerphilly in that period had a greater moisture content and was made in local farms. At the start of the 20th Century, competition for milk in the local area saw production decline and Caerphilly production was gradually relocated to England.

During World War II production was stopped and diverted to Cheddar in English factories. Post-war, those factories began to produce Caerphilly as it could be made more quickly than Cheddar and so was more profitable. The majority of Caerphilly is now produced in Somerset and Wiltshire. Artisan cheesemakers still make Caerphilly in pre-war style and have been successful at the British Cheese Awards.

Caerphilly cheese, originally a moist curd made in local farms, has since been replaced with a much drier version produced on an industrial scale. However, some cheesemakers still produce Caerphilly in the old style on an artisan basis. Farmhouse Caerphilly production died out during World War II as it did not keep as well as Cheddar from English factories. Post-war those factories started making their own versions of Caerphilly, which matured very quickly and thus required less financing. Over time, the public forgot the difference between the old and new Caerphilly cheeses.

There was a resurgence in farmhouse-produced Caerphilly in the 1980s in Wales, as a result of the work of Cenarth Cheese. Milk quotas imposed at the time meant milk was being thrown away so Thelma Adams decided to make a business out of producing cheese from the excess milk.

By the late 1990s, no cheesemakers in Caerphilly made the cheese for which the town is known. Realising this, Castle Dairies began making it, shortly after they opened in the town. Rather than using factory methods, they use pre-war production techniques by hand and won a gold and a bronze award at the British Cheese Awards, 2000. In July 2015 Caerphilly cheese was one of nine Welsh products considered by the government as candidates for name protection under the geographical indications and traditional specialities in the EU rules, the only cheese considered as a candidate on the list.

Caerphilly is a light-coloured (almost white) crumbly cheese made from cow's milk, and generally has a fat content of 45%-55%. It has a mild taste, with a tang of lemon. A traditional Caerphilly must be made with pasteurised or unpasteurised milk produced by Welsh farms. It comes in organic and non-organic varieties.

It is created by adding rennet to buttermilk, resulting in curd production. This is then formed and cut, before being pressed lightly into a cylindrical mould. These rounds are then submerged in a bath of brine for 24 hours to cause the production of a rind. Rice flour is used to dust the outside, affecting the colour of the rind. The cheese ripens quickly, in as little as two weeks. Acid production is initially slow but builds up. This and the low temperature used during production mean that the acid naturally dries out the curd, causing the crumbly texture. The cheese is nicknamed "The Crumblies".

Traditional Welsh Caerphilly and Traditional Welsh Caerffili are both protected by European Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status.

A Chicago Sun-Times article in 1987 extolled the virtues of Caerphilly cheese, describing it as having a "mild, salty, buttermilk" flavour and being halfway between ricotta and cheddar.

Bee Wilson, in The Daily Telegraph on 9 October 2011, praised the old style of Caerphilly now made by small-scale producers such as Gorwydd Farm, comparing it to French cheeses and calling it "buttery" in comparison to the post-war mass manufactured type which she called "young and flavourless, with the texture of chalk".

An annual three-day festival to celebrate the cheese, entitled The Big Cheese (Y Caws Mawr) takes place in Caerphilly. Also there is a sculpture of a cheese. A best Caerphilly cheese category forms part of the annual British Cheese Awards. In 2004, Gorwydd Caerphilly won both the Caerphilly prize and the overall award for best traditional British cheese. It was made by brothers Todd and Maugan Trethowan at their family farm in Tregaron, Ceredigion. However, they failed to win Best Welsh Cheese. They have now moved to Somerset.