The Art of Making Cheddar documentary | British Cheese Weekender

when I think of craft I think of two things I think of something that's very handmade and I think of a sense of history craft feels like something that is a tradition that's being handed down she's making obviously employs both [Music] as Jesus are made when you can feel what's going on with the milk because you're having to use your eyes your hands all your senses so it's a craft because it's made my hands by people you can't just walk into a dairy and pick up a recipe and make a goat cheese it's a science it's an art it's a instinctive thing with everything craft is about that it's not the passion that you have something to be the best it can be [Music] the Somerset pastures are perfect for dairy cows which is why it's the home of cheddar [Music] tom is always interested in a sense of terroir so he's trying to express the quality of the pasture land that they have there what we're really trying to do is just get this flavor of a specific place an area we've got this absolutely stunning little corner of the world the Somerset is very good at growing grass and wherever there's grass then you tend to find a good dairy production first of all it starts with the soil I mean that is the start of everything soil sounds like the most simplest thing it's essentially kind of mud with a few like bacteria and microbes and the organic matter going in there but it's so much more musk and dairy is unique because we are pushing towards a a really really diverse grazing lay so letting nature take its part a lot more with the growing of the crops yeah so you've got Timothy you got perennial ryegrass the more variety in the cowsy of herb äj-- the modern types of plants in their grazing sward the more interesting flavorsome the cheese will be so much of Bridget cheese-making is tied up in very commercial production which is a million miles away from what we're trying to do we want to produce a food that reflects the seasons much like really good wine you're tasting a bottled memory of that year and cheese is basically a bottled memory of every day I started farming 50 years ago and in those days there was a lot of incentive to produce a lot of food and I think we probably did damage to the land so what we're trying to do at Westcombe is revitalize that the soul is the most important thing without the soul you can't grow crops there's a river so should have particular line I think that the sustainability of soul will make a lot bit of cheese its lot better for our environment and it's much better for our children and grandchildren that it's a vitally important thing today in the past there would have been a thousands of people making cheese across the countries every dairy farmer would have had their liquid milk sales and often the farmer's wife would make cheese at home during the Second World War the rationing was introduced and so people were encouraged to make a very standard style of cheese when rationing ended there was a lot of expertise a lot of knowledge that was lost because people didn't go back to the old ways of making the cheddar on the farm for themselves or for their family Western is quite interesting because they did try not shut up for a while but soon decided that there's not that much joy in making something that you don't love so they changed from making bachata to clothbound artisan Somerset cheddar [Applause] [Applause] nice 16 can be when the holidays sir the noir Valley my family rented a house on this little farm and the farmer just took me under his wings so I did mock spreading and plowing and I was absolutely as I was so happy just did nothing else for that my family went often at holiday and my holiday was at the farm initially I was really into tracks is I wasn't that bothered by the food to the yet from trances like a bread it's alright but I was I really really loved what cows but used [Music] find a husband is difficult but then to find a husband he's got his degree is very difficult and then to find a husband he's got a degree in the influence of past your own flavor of cheese I think there's any one of them to be honest who has Nick it's very innovative passionate that's been definitely not someone who's gonna do things the way they've always done them he's gonna try different ways of grazing different ways of looking after the animals I really like milking this a daily harvest arable farmers a harvest lost their crops in summer and you autumn and I harvest my crops twice a day it's the same way it's if you've ever done any gardening and growing vegetables and about garden or something it's ingrained in us that we want to produce food so it's a real privilege to be able to do that most farmers couldn't care anything what the milk flavors like but he does because he's made cheese he will get that and be very interesting producing the right move he was very much like me he came to comes from a non farming background [Music] music has always passed my life I think I went to my first concert when I was nine days old and played in front of people with the first time when I was 3 years old when we finished school at 18 we signed a record deal and we did a couple of albums and then from there I did quite a lot of session work as a drummer I vividly remember every time I'd land in the new country as we become into land had always been staring out at the farmland and trying to see what the farming was like by the time I was in my mid-twenties I felt the call of the cows again if you're gonna make really good cheese you have to have really good milk you're not going to get really good milk from animals unless they've had a good healthy life I think happy cows will give happy cheese and good cheese and if I can walk around at night as I do before I go to bed every night I walk around the cows and because they look well I have a smile on my face and I know they're comfortable to be a farmer you need a really good relationship with your animals they're part of your family it's not just a thing it's a living beans pumpkin I think yes no no I really really enjoy working with cows I have more interaction with cows than pretty of humans just because the nature of the job they're like cartoon characters quite often just a complete obsession with food can be very very hilarious how similar they are to humans how I think I've learned more about the fellow mankind working with animals and I never have with working with other humans you put cows in a lovely luscious new field of grass and within ten minutes you'll have cows putting their heads over the fence trying to get so the other field just because it's the grass is always green the other side thing I love about chillies is they're all different they all taste different they all smell different and they're all different shapes and sizes and these are the ones kind of little a cross between chile and peppers there are other things i was in the lounge watching The Naked Chef Jamie Oliver I looked at the telly as you do for inspiration about when dad came in and said right come on you know what you're gonna do with your life you got to decide something let's try and work it out not that I are that let's get I'll be a chef so I went up to London and learn how to cook really that stage dad decided to get back into the traditional cheese making and they were having struggled selling the cheese so I decided to come down and give him a hand he came here and then Randolph Hudson from new dairy was doing a tasting that day and he said come back up to London with me and I'll teach you cheese so he was here for Danny went back up to London so if he wasn't here very long I worked at Neal's our dairy for about nine months and then worked really hard selling our cheese and realized the reason why I was working so bloody hard to sell all the stuff is because it was not very good so you found myself getting drawn more and more into the dairy to try and make it taste better we all say make the Duquette scafiddi with a girl called Jemima called also she has a doctorate and biochemistry from Oxford that's really handy if you want to be cheese maker say that was when we kind of started to put a bit more of the science behind what we were really doing and when I was making each other and she was making the cafeteria and saying right okay say what's going on here that's when you know people started to get a bit more aware and what we were about [Music] word up foodtubers okay so today we're going to do an experiment with one of the best cheese makers on the planet from Westcombe cheddar Tom Calvert Jamie's being a huge fan of what we do which I'm hugely grateful for somebody that you've respected for your whole life and stuff to kind of turn up and say oh you know good job its massive look at that that is a proper proper cheese right there now of course tom has changed a chef and I was changed a farmer that's a very good division we've never had a serious argument we will not agree with each other sometimes and we'll discuss it and work it out it must be said that more often than not that he tends to be right which is frustrating but I I've learned a lot from them I've been very lucky very someone I could work with he was so passionate with what he does and we are lucky yeah it could be so different we have raw milk coming into the dairy and we have people and the relationship between the raw ingredient the milk and the person is where the magic happens [Music] it's endlessly fascinating you have four ingredients of milk so random starter cultures and from that you can make a world of difference [Applause] there's a huge influence on flavor about the decision-making on every single aspect of where you're gonna when you're gonna come when you're gonna texturize how far you're going to stretch it what minor things you're going to do that is the art that is the art the artisan [Music] this side of cheese making war any outside practice cooks you you're essentially keeping hold of the old traditional way to do it I mean nowadays is too easy to get a machine in there with us here it's all handmade you see it from the liquid state and then the whole process we're constantly questioning what we're actually doing and is this right it's so difficult to tell because if you think about it with a cheddar the what we made today we won't see until it's already which is this time next year [Music] that's why this it's a such a complicated equation to get a really detailed beautiful [Music] [Music] I need to go into the store and select some cheese I need to grab a grab Jason to help me with that yep it's for yeah when we taste through cheese's we tend to taste one cheese per batch and that will give us the beginnings of a blueprint of what that kind of day was like it's a bit like if you were a chef and you were to send something out to the restaurant and you hadn't tasted it and that is a disaster so this one is an August one it's got another couple of months I miss it's good I mean it's got a really nice body about it and flavor profiles like yeah it's nice and balanced yeah it's surprising at you it's quite big once that you have made he wants to create the best environment for them to be looked after [Music] so you can imagine going to your dad who has been farming for years and saying up I want to build a cave in the side of the hill it's a fairly ambitious thing to want to do but he made it happen and then he goes and Commission's the first ever cheddar turning robot in the UK we have tina returner blesser the cheese turning robot turning a cheese maker is a necessarily job we're actually the physical act of turning labour there's nothing Arthur's own about that when he got six thousand Jesus turnover it's just hurts with the introduction of Tina the Turner we are able to taste through every single cheese within that batter if you think about this is a great big library of flavor every single cheese has its own unique identity too much these days you're looking at consistency and trying to make sure that everything tastes like you had it yesterday and the day before and the day before that I don't know it's not that inspiring is it [Music] I've been absolutely gutted if our cheese was just described as good and consistently good because he wants to be consistently good like really that's not life is it then if you think how ubiquitous throughout the world cheddar is it's amazing thing that actually that sort of very particular made on the farm clothbound complex cheddar there's only three people in the world who are really doing that people think they know what cheddar is but what they know is what cheddar has become whereas these Cheddar's are much more the real thing true origin of which others started [Music] when we produce the best cheese that you know that holy grail of cheese's which is just perfect absolutely 100% focus then we might as well pack our bags off and go home and that's it we've done it 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Channel: Academy of Cheese

Views: 14,225

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Id: P7KTBBXwZ8A

Length: 23min 4sec (1384 seconds)

Published: Sat May 09 2020