MOVERS, BAKERS & SHAKERS: SOMERSET
A vibrant community of producers is making this corner of the South West a hotbed for wild beer, raw-milk cheese, natural sparkling wine, cider brandy and apple pulp sourdough
The place to be, if wild beer and raw-milk cheese is your thing
Tom Calver flings the cellar doors open, revealing a chilly cathedral of cheese and, with a grin, introduces me to “Tina the Turner”, a robotic machine that turns mould-dappled wheels of Westcombe Cheddar as they mature. The vast cave was constructed after a trip to France, when he witnessed a different approach to affinage (the ageing process).
Westcombe Dairy, hidden down a tangle of hedgerowtrimmed lanes in Somerset, has been a hotbed of cheesemaking for more than a century (westcombedairy.com). It all began in the 19th century, when Edith Cannon created her legendary unpasteurised cheddar. Fast-forward through two world wars, the introduction of pasteurisation, the rise of the supermarket and the corresponding demand for bland blocks of cheddar, then press stop. This was when Tom’s father, dairy farmer Richard Calver, jumped off the massmarket merry-go-round. Unearthing the old recipes, he steered the farm full circle.
Tom, a chef in London until his apprenticeship at Neal’s Yard Dairy, completed the revolution. “Cheesemaking shouldn’t be done by the clock,” he says. “It needs to be intuitive. It’s all about slowing down the process. Over the past 50 years everything has been speeded up, so you no longer get breadth of flavour.”
Tom uses both old-school (his first cheese smoker was a converted phone booth) and high-tech techniques. His cows bed down on sand topped with a dusting of straw, purely to aid bacterial loading of the udders (adding good bacteria to the raw milk). “We try to preserve the unique microbial make-up, which gives the raw milk cheese its three-dimensional character.”
Tom’s grass-grazed Holstein Friesians are kept happy by “cow man” Nicholas Millard. “Finding a good cow man is hard. But finding one who has studied pasture to flavour? Well, there’s only one and we’ve got him.” When I visit, Nick is away at “cow club” in the Auvergne with a batch of fellow dairy nerds.
As well as cheddar, the dairy makes caerphilly and ricotta. And salami, courtesy of an in-house charcutier. This is a vibrant community of makers. The farm is also home to an artisan ice-cream maker and microbrewery, plus an annual beer and cheese festival.
In the farm shop, Tom hands me samples of his cheese. The caerphilly has a delicate yogurty taste; the ricotta sports a subtle sweetness; and the cheddar is tangy and complex – you can almost peel back the layers of flavour. In a back room, charcutier Paul is making salami from Tamworth pigs reared, field-to-pork, in woodland around family-run Gothelney Farm near Bridgwater. “We’re thinking of experimenting with veal salami,” adds Tom.
The farm shop is also The Wild Beer Co’s single-tap taproom (wildbeerco.com). Founded by Andrew Cooper »
and Brett Ellis, the business is known for its sour and barrel-aged beers brewed with wild yeasts.
Brett used to be a chef in California and uses his culinary expertise to create beers that can be paired with food. Of the Sea is pure Willy Wonka – the brew was inspired by lobster bisque, with aromas of shellfish and saffron. In the farm’s old cheese store, a beer library contains beers aged in old bourbon, whisky, port and cider brandy casks. Jamaican rum barrels add sweet richness, while red wine barrels give a balsamic flavour.
This year The Wild Beer Co has been experimenting with fruit. Other brewers use purée; they use freshly picked. A kombuchalike bright-pink sour beer, Choked Up, is made with chokeberries from Norway and apples and foraged fruit from Somerset. It’s barrel-aged and tart, with jammy redcurrants and cranberry aromas, and pairs well with partridge. Modus Operandi was its first wild-yeast beer. Aged in bourbon and red wine barrels and then blended, it’s blood red with a sour-cherry-dipped-intoffee flavour.
At the back of the dairy is sister company Brickell’s, where Rob Gore makes smallbatch ice cream (brickellsicecream.co.uk). The signature flavour? Milk. “Instead of vanilla I wanted to celebrate the quality of the milk,” he says. “I’ve just made a ricotta and dark-chocolate-chip ice cream.” Rob’s Malted Millionaire, meanwhile, uses pre-fermented beer from The Wild Beer Co.
Somerset is where old ways marry new ideas and their love child is a precocious genius. It’s a county of passionate producers and fired-up food innovators, which draws like-minded individuals into its nurturing folds. People such as trailblazer Catherine Butler, who runs At the Chapel, a restaurant with rooms, artisan bakery and wine shop in Bruton (atthechapel.co.uk). Or Ben Crofton, the former director of Soho House who, alongside his wife Vanessa and 2018 Great British Menu finalist Dan Fletcher, is launching 28 Market Place (a restaurant, bakery and wine shop) in Somerton this autumn (28marketplace.co.uk).
And don’t forget Swiss art dealers Iwan and Manuela Wirth. Their groundbreaking contemporary art gallery, Hauser & Wirth, sits on a 1,000-acre estate (Durslade Farm, just outside Bruton) alongside Roth Bar & Grill (rothbarandgrill.co.uk). The estate is a field-to-fork producer in its own right, rearing anything from Hereford cattle to Oxford Sandy pigs. If you’re in the area at the right time, check out the annual Hauser & Wirth Summer Party. Roth Bar & Grill sizzles porchetta on the grill, having cured it first with sugar, bay and juniper (cooking with fire is what they do), while Tom Calver dishes out Westcombe Cheddar toasties as people queue for an Orchard Mist cider cocktail at the Temperley’s brightly painted Somerset Cider Bus.
Don’t miss Burrow Hill farm, either. Surrounded by 180 acres of orchards, the family has been pressing cider here for more than 200 years. Julian Temperley, father of fashion designer Alice and photographer Matilda, not only makes cider, perry, Kingston Black aperitif and apple eau de vie, but is feted for his Somerset Cider Brandy (somersetciderbrandy.com).
Tours, tastings and orchard trails take visitors through trees laden with more than 40 heritage cider apples, from Kingston Black to Yarlington Mill, grazed by Lleyn sheep. I jump into a dilapidated farm vehicle and we career up to the top of Burrow Hill for a spectacular 360-degree view of the county. “The art of cider-making is in the blending,” says Julian. It’s one the Temperleys have mastered, winning the National Cider Championships in Devon, Somerset and Herefordshire in the same year.
Back in the yard, Julian introduces me to Fifi and Josephine, his old copper stills. “We are hillbilly cider makers – but we’re also distillers,” he smiles, handing me a glass of 20-year-old, treacle-laced fire.
Matilda Temperley is now working with her father and has recently launched her own creation, Somerset Shrubs. It’s a sophisticated non-alcoholic drink, made with cider vinegar, honey and fresh-pressed raspberries. Delicious with tonic.
There must be something in the water. Or soil. In 2015, in the Chew Valley, landscape architects Robin Snowdon and Georgina Harvey planted a four-acre Westfield Farm plot with 1,800 vines of disease-resistant varietals including solaris, seyval blanc and pinot noir. Biodynamic Limeburn Hill Vineyard was born (limeburnhillvineyard.co.uk). Part of their method is not clearing vegetation under the vines away: “The more plants, the more biodiversity, the richer the soil,” Robin says. “It feels like we’re creating a place full of life – and the wine is just a by-product.”
Limeburn’s first vintage is now available. »
THE CHEDDAR IS TANGY AND COMPLEX – YOU CAN ALMOST PEEL BACK THE LAYERS OF FLAVOUR
Wolf Wine in Bath (wolfwine.co.uk) and local gastropub The Pony & Trap are both stockists (theponyandtrap.co.uk). We sit on straw bales in the sun and try three bottles (white, rosé and red) of its pétillant naturel (the traditional artisanal method of making sparkling wine) – the white is lively and bone dry, bursting with apples and pears, while the rosé has a floral bouquet and heavenly strawberry and caramel notes.
I eye the red nervously, bad memories of sparkling shiraz flooding back. The bubbles are candy-floss pink, the wine deep and dark – but the flavour is not overcooked jam. Robin smiles at my confusion. “It’s like tasting fruit fresh from the vine.”
One of the most hyped openings in Somerset this year is The Newt (thenewtinsomerset.com). South African
THE BUBBLES ARE CANDY-FLOSS PINK, THE WINE DEEP AND DARK Ð BUT THE FLAVOUR IS NOT OVERCOOKED JAM
billionaire Koos Bekker and his wife Karen, the couple behind the Cape Dutch farmhouse-turned-boutique hotel Babylonstoren, bought the 17th-century Hadspen House estate in 2013. Here, at what was once the home of Arthur Hobhouse (founder of the national parks system) and garden designer Penelope Hobhouse, they have planted orchards, restored the gardens and turned the palladian mansion into a hotel.
There is passion at The Newt, with a starry team plucked from River Cottage, The Lost Gardens of Heligan and Noma. From the moment you arrive at the visitor reception, a soaring threshing barn, it has undeniable wow factor. Everything is exquisitely conceived, from the carefully curated store showcasing local artisans’ wares to the farm shop with meat from butcher Lloyd Tucker’s parents’ farm down the road. The shiny state-of-the-art cider-making facility sits next to an open-air cyder bar, with a daily apple-pressing show.
The Garden Café is a contemporary vision of glass and wood that overlooks the kitchen garden, where Charles Dowding’s no-dig gardening methods are practised. Its seasonal menu has been designed as a gardener’s notebook, and head chef Alan Stewart not only makes sure that an element of each dish is from the garden, but that fruit and vegetables are the headline acts. Try pickled gooseberry with brown and forest-smoked mackerel, salad leaves from Tia’s garden and “Napoli carrots” braised and tossed with carrot-top pesto. Even the bread and butter is on message: the sourdough starter is made from apple pulp from the cider press, and the buffalo milk butter is infused with preserved orange and thyme from the garden.
The Newt is an architectural and horticultural wonder. The garden’s main attraction is Penelope Hobhouse’s famous parabola walled garden, planted with an apple maze of 460 trees. It might be the antithesis to the county’s earthy bedrock, but there’s no denying it’s a glorious homage to Somerset’s most famous asset: the apple.
HOW TO DO IT
Doubles start from £125, b&b, at At the Chapel (atthechapel.co.uk) and £300, b&b, at The Newt (thenewtinsomerset.com). Durslade Farmhouse sleeps 12 and is available to rent from £650 per night (dursladefarmhouse.co.uk). Follow Lucy on Instagram and Twitter @lucygillmore.