THE SCIENCE BIT

At Ivy’s Reserve, we’re proud to follow the ways of working set up by our grandmother Ivy over a century ago. We follow her recipe, barely vary her process and still mature our delicious Cheddar in wooden boxes that are kept to the same temperature found in the barn where she began her pioneering work.

One of the keys to continuing her tradition – and to achieving the same exceptional taste that she perfected all that time ago – is the small but essential detail of starter cultures.

These are the combination of bacteria that are added to the milk to begin the process of turning it into cheese, and which are vital to creating the complexity of flavour, aroma and texture that marks out a vintage Cheddar worthy of the name.

While most cheesemakers now use bought-in frozen starter cultures, we still make our own and alter them depending on the milk that’s produced each day, following Ivy’s recipe. For Ivy, this was developed after a period of training from a Miss Taylor of the Somerset Farm Institute. This lady came to stay with Ivy at the farm and taught her the science: how the starter culture makes the milk more acidic and forces it to curdle, which then forms the curd and begins to build the taste, aroma and texture of Cheddar.

Once she understood the process, Ivy then applied her talent for cooking. As she used to say, “It’s not the written recipe that makes the difference, it’s the notes in the margin.” She applied her determination to the recipe, trying small variations until she got the results she wanted, tweaking it to suit the milk that was produced as we still do today, until it had the best possible flavour.

Another important factor was her scrupulous hygiene, which meant that the cultures were never compromised and always produced exceptional results. Back in the day, there were around 3,000 farms that produced their own Cheddar, and Ivy’s combination of knowledge, talent and thoroughness were the reason that hers was one of the very few that continue to this day.

Ivy’s recipe has been winning awards ever since. It's because she achieved such outstanding results that we haven’t altered her recipe, and why we still use the same starter culture today. Some call it traditional, but we think of it as doing things properly. 

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