What Our Cheesemongers Are Eating Now

Behind every piece of cheese that leaves Paxton & Whitfield is a team of cheesemongers quietly making sure it reaches you at its best.

At our cheese rooms in the Cotswolds, cheeses are received, matured and cared for before making their way to our shops and customers around the country. Depending on the cheese, that might mean turning, brushing or washing it as it develops, as well as cutting, wrapping and packing each piece ready to leave us.

It is hands on work, and it also means the team spend their days surrounded by an enviable amount of very good cheese.

So we asked Jack, Alice and Sam what they are particularly enjoying from the cheese rooms right now.

Jack: Little Rollright

Jack’s current choice is Little Rollright, a small, soft washed rind cheese made in the Cotswolds.

Little Rollrights are always wonderfully generous cheeses, but Jack says the batches coming through the cheese rooms at the moment have the gooiest of hearts, making them particularly difficult to resist.

Cut through the supple rind and the centre becomes increasingly soft and yielding as the cheese ripens. It is the sort of cheese that needs very little accompaniment beyond good crackers and perhaps something refreshing to drink alongside it.

For Jack, right now, it is an easy choice.

Alice: Mayfield

Alice is reaching for Mayfield, which she says is tasting particularly sweet at the moment.

Made in East Sussex, Mayfield is a firm, Alpine style cheese with a smooth texture and a naturally sweet, nutty character. It is an easy cheese to keep returning to, with enough depth for an interesting cheeseboard while remaining immensely approachable.

Cheese changes throughout the year as the milk, season and maturation develop, which is one of the pleasures of tasting it regularly. At the moment, Alice thinks Mayfield is showing itself particularly well.

Sam: Gorwydd Caerphilly

Sam required slightly less consideration.

Her answer is Gorwydd Caerphilly, and apparently it would be Gorwydd Caerphilly regardless of the time of year or what else happened to be tasting particularly good that day.

It is, in Sam’s words, her one true cheese love.

Gorwydd Caerphilly combines a fresh, lactic centre with a softer, more yielding layer just beneath the rind as it matures. Crumbly, lemony and gently savoury, it is a cheese with far more character than its understated appearance might suggest.

For Sam, however, no further persuasion is necessary.

From our cheese rooms to your cheeseboard

Working with cheese every day gives our cheesemongers a particularly good view of what is tasting at its best at any given moment.

Some favourites change with the season. Others, as Sam has demonstrated, are rather more permanent.

Whether turning a wheel in the cheese rooms, wrapping a piece for an order or recommending something across the counter, it is that familiarity with the cheese itself that sits at the heart of Paxton & Whitfield cheesemongering.

And if you are looking for something particularly good for your own cheeseboard, Jack, Alice and Sam have given you three very good places to start.