Ford Farm Cheeses. Smoked Cheese Has Never Tasted So Good.

Ford Farm cheeses. Smoked cheese has never tasted so good.

You can shout about cheese all you want to because let’s face it with so much choice around we all have our favourite types. Some cheese snobs might argue you can’t beat a strong stilton, a runny brie or a creamy camembert, but sorry cheese snobs you most surely can. England can proudly boast a fine cheese-making heritage and you won’t find a better example than Ford Farm cheeses. Smoked cheese has never tasted so good.

Smoked cheese has long been underrated, in most part due to the popularity of German Bavarian Rauchkaser, but take a bite of quality aged cheddar slowly smoked over oak wood chippings and you’ll be tasting a little piece of heaven.

Ford Farm has been in the cheese making business for decades from its west country farm near Dorchester, where the rolling fields of Dorset enable its grazing herds to produce milk good enough to award its West Country Farmhouse Cheddar PDO status (protected designation of origin). Add to this a unique maturing process some 200 ft underground at Wookey Hole – the famous caves in Somerset and you have cheeses of some repute it has to be said.

With such a production pedigree it’s no surprise Ford Farm has recognised the dearth of quality smoked cheeses and has thankfully produced a clutch of equally enviable smoked offerings that are in my view too good to miss.

Oakwood

A pure cheddar slowly smoked over natural oak chippings giving it a glorious golden rind.

Dorset Red

Another robust cheese, deliciously amber, not unlike a Red Leicester but with that unique just-barbecued taste that makes it leap out at you.

Billie’s Smoked Goats Cheese

Goat’s cheese which is anything but. I’ve always been wary of Goat’s cheese, finding it way too strong for my palate, yet this version is creamy, light and with that stunning Smokey tinge a cheese that would be an ideal dinner party talking point. No one would even realise it’s Goat it’s that good.

Finally, a British high quality cheese-maker who can deliver smoked cheese the way it should be. As for me, the sun’s shining and I’m getting a chilled bottle of Pinot and tucking in.