Provenance - Dairy

Gary and I started Country Cheeses 15 years ago with a table in Tavistock’s Pannier Market, 6 cheeses, and loads of enthusiasm for eating ‘real’ cheese. We now have 2 shops, one in Tavistock, the other in Topsham, where we sell in the region of 100 different cheeses, all British and all mostly from the Westcountry.

We feel ourselves to be very fortunate as we deal with the cream of cheesemakers who are driven to produce the best cheeses you could find anywhere, and who are also prepared to produce cheeses especially for us.

Gary spends a lot of his time travelling around the Westcountry, selecting and tasting cheeses, not a bad life. He also enjoys researching cheese recipes and then persuading some kind cheesemaker to have a go at them.

I must add that it’s not quite the same as making a cake!

What we do is a way of life rather than a job. In both shops we feel very much part of the community and we get a great

feeling of excitement when we uncover new cheeses for our
regular customers. Our visitors are also very important, it’s wonderful to see the look of amazement and delight when people realise for the first time that the array of cheeses before them are mainly from the Westcountry, and also that the flavours and textures are so diverse and fantastic.

What we really want is for people to have a good, memorable, and tasty, experience when they visit our shops. We are specialists but we strive to be specially accessible too.

Long Live ‘Real’ cheese!

Eloise Jungheim
Joint Owner of Country Cheeses

...................................................................................................................................................

Sharpham Brie, South Devon - Champion Product 2005, Taste of the West
...a real FAVOURITE!

The thousand-year-old farm adjacent to Sharpham House is home to our Cheese Dairy where we produce four different cheeses. The milk comes from our own herd of 60 Jersey cows that graze 180 acres of organic pasture and meadowland on the banks of the river Dart.

Our cheesemakers skillfully combine meticulous attention to hygiene with traditional methods, including cutting, moulding and turning entirely by hand to produce cheeses

of consistently high quality. All raw materials are G.M. free. Although the milk is organic the cheeses are not currently certified as organic by the soil association.

SHARPHAM is a Coloummier type cheese, which has been hand made to our own recipe since 1980. Starter cultures, vegetable rennet and salt are the only additions to the fresh Jersey milk. It is a mould ripened cheese with a unique flavour and creamy texture.

We are ardent in sourcing the freshest and best quality dairy produce for our menus, and over the years have discovered some wonderful produce close to Combe House.

somewhere different, somewhere special