milk type
Cow
ingredients
MILK, salt, rennet
coagulant
Animal Rennet
milk treatment
Raw
location
Evercreech, Somerset
milk source
Own herd; Bought-in
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milk type
Cow
ingredients
MILK, salt, rennet
coagulant
Animal Rennet
milk treatment
Raw
location
Evercreech, Somerset
milk source
Own herd; Bought-in
breed
Holstein; Dairy Shorthorn
season
All year
average age
18 Months
cheesemakers
Rob Howard; The Calver Family
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Westcombe Dairy's maturing cave is equipped with Cheddar-turning robot, nicknamed Tina the Turner.
Our Work
We visit Westcombe Dairy six times a year to select our batches of cheese.
Serving Suggestions
Grate Westcombe Cheddar into scrambled eggs towards the end of cooking for deeper savoury flavour.
FAQs
As a general rule of thumb, we would recommend roughly between 100 and 150 grams per person for after dinner, and a bit more if cheese is the focus of the meal. If you are buying cheese to serve over a couple of days or as part of a buffet, it is advisable to buy a few larger pieces. This will both look better and keep better than many small bits. To help visualise weights, a good tip is to consider that a regular supermarket pat of butter weighs between 200 and 250 grams. If you are at all unsure please give us a call for some advice.
The best option is to keep your cheese wrapped in its paper within a box in the fridge. This will prevent the cheese from drying out and absorbing other flavours. Your cheese will arrive wrapped in waxed cheese paper, which achieves the best possible balance between maintaining humidity around the cheese and allowing it to breathe. We are happy to provide some free extra cheese paper, just search for "cheese paper" and add it to your basket. We don't recommend cling film or foil as it can cause the cheese to sweat which will negatively affect the flavour.

Westcombe Oxonlees
Westcombe is a smooth, well rounded farmhouse Cheddar from Somerset, selected for its warm, lingering flavours and happy balance of creaminess and acidity


Westcombe Dairy's maturing cave is equipped with Cheddar-turning robot, nicknamed Tina the Turner.
milk type
Cow
ingredients
MILK, salt, rennet
coagulant
Animal Rennet
milk treatment
Raw
location
Evercreech, Somerset
milk source
Own herd; Bought-in
breed
Holstein; Dairy Shorthorn
season
All year
average age
18 Months
cheesemakers
Rob Howard; The Calver Family
background
Cheddar has been made at Westcombe Farm since the late 19th century, and the cheese produced there today is much the same as it would have been back then. After dabbling briefly in the manufacture of block Cheddar in the 1970s, Richard Calver decided in 1999 to return the dairy to its traditional roots. Turning to the recipe that would have been followed in the 1890s, he dismantled the factory and built a dairy better suited to a more traditional make. When Richard's son Tom joined the business, he brought with him a chef's training and experience of working in Neal's Yard Dairy. Moving the make away from mechanisation as much as possible, Tom set about mastering every aspect of its process, from the quality of the milk, to understanding the interplay of rennets and cultures, to building a new maturing cave complete with Tina the cheese-turning robot. At the same time, Richard continued to work on improving his herd, and most recently took the bold decision to switch their herd of Holstein-Friesian to Shorthorns – a heritage breed that can subsist solely on grass and silage, and offers both versatility and slower, more sustainable growth. Once moulded, the Cheddars are cloth-bound with lard and matured for between 11 and 18 months. Today, Westcombe is one of very few Cheddars left in Somerset that are still made by hand on the farm using their own milk, a natural cloth binding and traditional cheese cultures.
our work with this cheese
We visit Westcombe Dairy six times a year to select our batches of cheese.
pairing suggestion
Grate Westcombe Cheddar into scrambled eggs towards the end of cooking for deeper savoury flavour.