Rafter Reserve, fourteen months.

Raw ewe's milk from the Shippon flock at Hartland, pressed in 2.4 kg wheels and turned in our cellar until the paste goes brittle and the rind smells of hay. Long, dry, faintly sweet, and salty at the edge of the wedge.

Choose a cut

200 g — £7.20400 g — £14.40Whole wheel — £82.00

Cut weights land within about 8% of the figure you pick, and you are charged the real weight.

Ask us to cut this

Back to the slate

Wrap slip£7.20200 g · raw ewe's milk · vegetarian rennetCut fresh Thursday morning · four wheels open

Four things

What the parcel holds when it lands.

The cheese, in paper

Your cut, folded in waxed paper and tied, with the true weight and the cutting date written on the outside in pencil.

A wool liner and a brick

Sheep's wool insulation and a frozen gel brick, both of which go in the recycling or the compost. Nothing in the box is plastic film.

The counter note

A card in the same handwriting as the tag: what it is, which flock, how long we aged it, and how long it has left.

Two oatcakes, always

Made in Barnstaple, slipped in so you can taste it standing at the kitchen worktop before you decide where it is going.

Hartland Shippon

One flock, one cheesemaker, April to October only.

Jowan Trescothick milks 180 Friesland ewes on the cliff fields above Hartland Quay and makes cheese three mornings a week while the grass is up. The wheels come to us at eight weeks old and sit on spruce until they are ready, which is somewhere around fourteen months and never on a date we picked in advance.

Raw milk, animal-free rennet, sea salt from Bude
Turned by hand every fourth day for a year and a bit
About 420 wheels a season, and we take 60 of them
Nothing is made between November and March

The rest of the farms

Inside a traditional cutting room with a marble counter, scales and hanging tools

The cutting room, Thursday, 7:40am

Season closes in November ↘

Before it is cut

Five answers about this one wheel.

Anything else goes on the order form and comes back answered in writing.

What does the delivery cost and when does it arrive?

Chilled post goes out Tuesday and Thursday with a 4pm cut-off the day before. Devon and Cornwall is £4.50 and lands next working day; the rest of mainland Britain is £6.95 and takes one to two days. Over £60 the carriage comes off. Collection from the Bridgeland Street yard costs nothing and can be same day if you ask before eleven.

What if it turns up warm or wrong?

Tell us inside 48 hours and pick a refund or a replacement on the next post. We do not ask for photographs and we do not want the food posted back. If the fault is ours the carriage comes back too. If you simply did not get on with the cheese, say so — we will swap it once and note what you did not like.

How much should I get for four people?

As one cheese after dinner, 200 g feeds four with a little left. As part of a board of three, take 200 g of this and 200 g each of two softer things. If it is the whole meal, double it. The 2.4 kg wheel is for a party of thirty or a pub, and it wants three days' notice because we have to pull one that is ready.

How do I keep it, and for how long?

Leave it in the waxed paper, put it in the salad drawer or the fridge door, and change the paper when it goes damp. Three weeks is comfortable. Take it out an hour before you eat it, cut from the rind outwards so everybody gets the same thing, and keep the rind for a soup.

Is it suitable for vegetarians, or in pregnancy?

The rennet is animal-free, so yes to vegetarians. It is a raw-milk cheese, which the standard advice says is fine in pregnancy when it is hard and aged like this one, but we are cheesemongers and not midwives — ask yours, and if you would rather not, we will build the same shape of board from the five pasteurised lines.