Why Welsh cheddar should be the star of your cheese board

“You couldn’t make Hafod cheddar anywhere else — it’s a reflection of this farm, this land and these cows,” says farmer Patrick Holden. “And it all starts with a healthy microbiome in the soil, through to the one in our stomachs — it’s all interconnected.”

Patrick has been farming at Bwlchwernen Fawr, Wales’s oldest organic dairy farm, for 50 years; his wife Becky for 25. Here, near Lampeter, Ceredigion, clover pastures feed the soil with nitrogen and, says Patrick, “power the cows” — a herd of Ayrshires with glossy white and conker-brown coats.

Patrick is one of the UK’s organic farming pioneers. In the 1970s, when a reliance on chemicals was the norm, he used what Becky calls a “tapestry of ecosystems” — a mix of wheat and oat crops, dairy cows and apple orchards, akin to how Welsh farming used to be — to bring the farm back to life after years of neglect. Later, he set up the UK’s first organic farming standards, then the Sustainable Food Trust, of which he’s still chief executive.

Behind the farmhouse, in the Holden Farm Dairy’s store, 10kg cheddars line the shelves, their rinds blooming with blue-green mould. This award-winning cheese is made using raw milk and has a delicate, nutty flavour followed by a cheddar tang.

The Holdens developed the recipe with help from other cheesemakers and books from the early 20th century. They use a gentler, cooler process than is used to make most farmhouse cheddars, and a less aggressive bacterial culture, allowing the cheese to develop at its own pace. Unlike most other producers, the Holdens don’t wrap their cheddar in cloth, which they say allows it to breathe while it matures over 11 months.

“There’s a year’s challenges, opportunities, smiles and tears held in this cheese,” says Becky, who does most of the farming and describes her connection to the cows and farm as intensely emotional. “The knowledge that food is an expression of the land that it comes from — its terroir — has been forgotten,” she adds. “Every field has something to give — it’s about the subtle nuances.”

It’s this connection that Patrick is continuing to advocate for, through the Sustainable Food Trust’s latest project: a network of ‘Beacon Farms’ across the UK that aims to showcase sustainability. “We’re building a community of farmers for the kind of food we’re going to need to feed everyone in the future,” he says.

Try more Welsh produce:

1. Cider
Seidir Tydecho is reviving Wales’s rich, but largely lost, cider-making tradition with a sparkling version fermented with honey in the Dyfi Valley.

2. Laverbread
Made by cooking and mincing laver (a type of seaweed), laverbread is known as ‘Welshman’s caviar’. Parsons Pickles in Carmarthenshire sells it in pre-packaged trays.

3. Sea salt
Produced on Anglesey since Roman times, sea salt has been harvested by Halen Môn since 1997. The company also offers tours.