Isle of Mull Cheddar

Isle of Mull Cheddar is a hearty Scottish Cheddar that tends to be slightly more compact than other English Cheddars but it’s still made in the time honoured way and each cheese whilst maturing is larded by hand to retain moisture within the cheese

The Reade’s family farm on the island uses its own sustainable sources to produce the energy it needs: wind, wood, and an on-site hydroelectric power plant. Their innovative heat exchange system uses heat removed from the milk in the evening to warm it back up for making cheese in the morning. They are the last remaining traditional farmhouse cheesemakers from the Hebridean Islands.

During the summer, the cows graze on the richly diverse pastures that flourish in the warmer months, but with the notoriously damp Scottish climate the amount of time they can spend outdoors is limited. The quest for supplementary food led the Reades to the local distillery, Tobermory, which was facing the problem of disposing of fermented grain, one of the biggest by-products of distilling. It didn’t take long for them to come to an arrangement, and that symbiotic relationship has continued ever since. The herd feeds on grass in summer and hay in winter but enjoys a supplement of fermented grain throughout the year, a unique addition which only adds to the cheese’s deeply flavoursome complexity. Once set and moulded, the cheeses are kept in an underground cellar to mature for up to 18 months.

All of their cheddar cheeses are made with unpasteurised milk from the farms own herd of hardy, healthy, island cows fed on grass and whisky grains from the Tobermory Distillery.

The making of cheese on the Scottish Isles has been a long practiced way of conserving the rich plentiful milk in the spring and early summer.  Hard cheeses such as this Isle Of Mull Cheddar were traditionally made as there would be a long wait until the cheese could reach the market, and soft cheese would not travel or last so well.