Westcombe Dairy Visit Spring 2026
Spring in Somerset
Between the mayhem of one Christmas and the next, an important (and highly enjoyable) part of our job is to pay visits to producers and get a sense of all that goes into their products; the animals, pastures, milking parlours, make rooms and maturing cellars.
With spring settling in, we headed out West to a particularly hilly and staggeringly green corner of Somerset, where one of our most popular Cheddar producers works their magic.
Our visit took us to Westcombe Dairy, where we were greeted by Tom Calver, who inherited the business from his father, Richard, in 2008. Tom is the latest in a long line of cheesemakers on this site, with production at Westcombe dating back as far as 1890, although farming and production methods have changed drastically over the course of its history, as we would soon see for ourselves.
As he showed us around his picturesque farm, Tom’s philosophy became clear: look after the land and the milk will benefit. Central to this idea is a commitment to regenerative agriculture. Rather than simply sustaining the land, Tom and his team actively work to improve soil quality and biodiversity, using techniques such as rewilding, herbal leys and carefully managed grazing rotation. Fields are sown with diverse mixes of grasses, legumes and herbs, encouraging healthier soils and deeper-rooting plants, while sections of the farm are left to rewild, restoring ecological balance. The cows are moved regularly between pastures, mimicking natural grazing patterns and allowing the land time to recover, resulting in richer soil, more resilient grass and, ultimately, better milk.
Through these regenerative farming practices, Tom seeks to harness the Somerset terroir and allow the soils, grasses, climate and seasons to speak through the cheese. Rather than striving for rigid uniformity, he embraces the natural variation that comes from working so closely with the land. Subtle shifts in flavour from batch to batch are celebrated as markers of season, pasture and changing weather conditions. We were given samples from two batches of Westcombe Cheddar made only a matter of weeks apart with completely different profiles: one brothy and umami-rich, the other much brighter and fruitier.
We then turned from the land to the courtyard to see the dairy itself, arriving in time to catch sight of the hand-cheddaring in action. The whey left behind from this process will subsequently be turned into Westcombe Ricotta, ensuring nothing is wasted. The same thinking runs through the whole site, where one process feeds into another and very little goes unused. Even Tom’s little son has already adopted this spirit, taking apart old beer-brewing barrels to turn into kindling.
Westcombe’s site comprises a number of small food and beverage producers, forming a small, interconnected community where one maker’s byproduct is another’s ingredient (the ricotta, for example, finding its way into Brickell’s ‘Ricotta Stracciatella’ ice cream). You could spend hours eating and drinking delicious produce from this one small area, where everything is tied back to the land.
We ended our day with an overnight stay at The Three Horseshoes Inn, Batcombe, a sensitively restored 17th century inn now run by Margot Henderson, where she sources produce and ingredients locally. It was a fitting end to our farm visit.
Copy by Harry English, Wholesale Cheesemonger
