Welsh cheesemonger Owen Davies has fulfilled a long-held ambition to make cheese, after creating two new products with support from Food Centre Wales.
The two new products are Hiraeth – a small, soft ewes’ milk cheese – and a crumbly mixed sheep and cows’ milk cheese called Crwys. Developed by Davies at a Welsh Government funded facility in June, both cheeses will be sold through Davies’ Ty Caws retail business in Cardiff.
They will also be sold at farmers’ markets and through Ty Caws’ online shop from September onwards. “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” Davies said. “We’re present at farmers’ markets where we are surrounded by amazing food producers, so I felt we needed to be more involved in making cheese as well as selling it.
It’s our way of supporting Welsh farmers and cheese.” Davies, who founded Ty Caws in 2020 after working as a cheese buyer for Harvey & Brockless, will continue production at the Food Centre and hopes to one day supply other retailers with the cheeses. The sheep’s milk comes from a small farm in Pembrokeshire called Ewenique Dairy, run by Bryn Perry, who makes also blue cheese and a whey vodka.
“Wales is a land of sheep, but we don’t actually produce a lot of sheep’s milk cheeses,” said Davies. “A lot of my customers really like the flavour and people who have an intolerance to cows’ milk cheese often find sheep’s milk easier to eat.” He added that the cheesemaking operation could be part of a bricks-and-mortar shop in the future, if the new products were successful.
This article first appeared in the August 2023 edition of Fine Food Digest.
