The internationalist history of the Welsh First Minister’s favourite cheese
As a cheese lover and frequenter of the original Neals Yard cheese shop in the 1980s (which was actually in Neal’s Yard in Covent Garden) I’ve been an enthusiast for British and Irish farmhouse cheeses (preferably unpasteurised) ever since.
Like cask beer they represented a survival of a craft and artisanal tradition that big business tried to wipe out in favour of bland, mass market products.
Big business failed thanks to a consumer revolt although the last few months have been tough ones for artisan cheesemakers as for many others.
It was good to hear Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford in a Q&A this week be diverted into talking about the love of cheese he had since his youth. It was just a glimpse of normal life during a period when he has done in my view a decent job of trying to manage a very difficult time, compared to some one could think of.
He mentioned of course Caerphilly a salty, crumbly cheese. Interestingly for socialists and internationalists probably the best current example of it is made by the Trethowan creamery as Gorwydd in North Somerset. That is no accident because as the link below underlines there is a tradition of making the classically Welsh cheese just across the Bristol Channel.
A reminder too that the great miners leader in 1926 A J Cook who was a Welsh miner was actually born in Wookey, Somerset.
Good cheese like labour politics knows no boundaries.
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