Cheese

When Chris and Jeff Reades moved to the island of Mull from Somerset in 1983 to farm dairy cows, they could hardly have envisaged that the small cheeses they began to make in a bucket would end up being sold in huge 22kg truckles and be so much in demand they can barely keep up.

But the Reade family continue to manage admirably to maintain high standards with their award-winning Isle of Mull cheese. Although they already knew about milk and dairy farming, they had to learn cheese-making from scratch in the dairy that came with Sgriob-ruadh Farm, near Tobermory, dating from the early 1800s. Their cheese is made to a traditional Cheddar-making recipe and so is defined as ‘Cheddar-style’, but differs, as according to Chris, ‘it is a product of here’. The water and soil are different, as are the herbs the cows eat. The cows also eat draff (a by-product of ground-up malted barley from Tobermory’s distillery) - all giving the cheese a unique character.