Westcombe Charcuterie

The link between pigs and dairy is historical.  Farms produced a variety of foods: some animals for milk, cheese and butter, some crops and maybe market garden fruits and vegetables and some animals for meat. The geographical location often dictated which of these foodstuffs were most successful and over time farming began to specialise with certain areas proving better for arable and others for dairy.

Even as farms specialised, however there has been a link between dairy and pigs.  Consuming the whey from cheesemaking, helps the pigs lay down fat and produce flavourful meat and from this tradition you see charcuterie and dairy develop side by side.  Notable examples would be Parmigiano Reggiano and Prosciutto di Parma in Italy or in the UK, Stilton and Melton Mowbray Pork Pies.

During the 20^th century farming went beyond just specialising and food production started to follow more of a factory model.  This began on a small scale with examples in France, Italy and the UK of dairies being started to use the milk from more than one farm. The Donge family producing Brie in Triconville, the Berthauts producing Epoisses in Burgundy and particularly pertinent to Somerset, the school set up by the Bath and West Southern Counties (Agricultural) Society originally teaching the Cannon method of cheddar making which Edith Cannon and her father Henry had devised.  All of these begin to make cheesemaking an industry in itself.

At Westcombe Dairy, around 1890 the farmers, Mr & Mrs Brickell made cheese with Edith Cannon who was famed for moving around the area and helping farms improve their cheeses.  Her approach was instinctive, following where the milk led the recipe, adapting timings naturally to different acidity levels and moistures in the vat, the time of year and season or the conditions of different farms and herds.  The result was always good cheese. 

During the 20^th century the family, now with the name Clothier, developed links with local farmers and as the business grew, Westcombe cheeses continued to be highly regarded. 

After the second world war, as society changed, and with it farming, food production and retail, the supermarkets became a big driver in how food was produced.  This hit its peak in the 1970s and at Westcombe, while the current farmer Richard Calver was fully focussed on improving the soil and pasture quality, the decision was that they should make the block cheeses the supermarkets required.  Even in this format, Westcombe cheeses were characterful and distinctive but it wasn’t a medium that suited the care given to either the cheese or the rest of the farming.  Through the 1980s and 1990s Richard, with Christine Gore (granddaughter of the Brickells) decided to return to their roots and make the traditional, clothbound cheddar that had given them their reputation as cheesemakers in the first place.  When Richard’s son Tom joined the team, committed to the quality the farm was aiming for thanks to his work as a chef in London and an apprenticeship at Neal’s Yard Dairy, the current ethos of the farm began to fully take shape.

Westcombe Farm operates holistically.  For the cheeses and other products to shine, every link in the chain needs to support the next.  The soil needs to be healthy with diverse microbial life to support rich lush pastures with as varied species of different plants, legumes, grasses and herbs as it can provide.  These then enrich the grazing cattle which benefits not only their milk but also their overall health, as different plants also provide medicinal qualities which the cows will naturally seek out as they need them. Finally, in what is known as a virtuous cycle, the cows, by process of digestion and excretion return organic matter to further enrich the soil.

With this approach to farming, it doesn’t sit right to treat the bull calves that are born each year, as the industry commonly does.  Farms either use sexed semen to try and ensure that all calves born each year are female and can become milkers or the bull calves are sold very young for processing, often as pet food.  At Westcombe, recognising that through their own virtuous cycle, the bull calves have as important a role in maintaining the health of the farm’s ecosystem as the milking herd, they decided to rear them for veal.  These calves are a world away from the sort of veal rearing that gained such a bad reputation in the 1980s.  They live from 8-12 months, longer than for most rose veal and, depending on the time of year, either graze the rolling hillside pastures of the farm or overwinter in deep straw barns.  In short, they are looked after every bit as well as the dairy herd.

It was to make use of these veal calves that Westcombe Charcuterie was developed.  The veal from Westcombe Farm marries pork from Gothelney Farm nearby, where Fred Price rears Tamworth & Large Black pigs crossed with Saddleback or Duroc.  These are outdoor reared, rare breed pigs who are slow growing, up to 10 months old.  Their meat and the quality of fat produced is exceptional.

Gothelney have also been impacted by the changes in society, farming and food production over the 20^thCentury.  The farm had been solely producing wheat.  Due to that, they found themselves locked into an industrial system that, they were increasingly aware, was doing the farm no good.  Using nitrogen fertilisers created weeds and the need for herbicides, while using fungicides depleted the soil of its microbial activity which is essential for soil health.  As a return to respecting the ecosystem of the farm and prioritising soil health, they began to use crop rotation and in particular the use of herbal leys where a combination of grasses, herbs and legumes naturally improve the soil.   The grasses provide support and structure, legumes (e.g. Clover) naturally fix nitrogen into the soil, enhancing fertility without the use of fertilisers, while the herbs (in particular chicory) have medicinal properties, aiding digestion of the animals that graze them, reducing bloat and having anti-parasite properties.  As part of this ecosystem, pigs were introduced to graze the herbal leys, again making use of the virtuous cycle of grazing, digestion and excretion.  As they adapted the grains grown on their land from modern wheats which cannot grow well without significant artificial intervention to local and heritage varieties, they found that the pigs that suited the farm best were older and rare breeds.

The two farms’ stories come together in the form of Westcombe Charcuterie and its champion Paul Burton.

Paul’s former experience as a chef and butcher had already led him to charcuterie as a happy marriage between the two disciplines, even before he was attached to Westcombe Farm, but it was here that he felt able to truly make his charcuterie sing.

Within the fledgling British charcuterie industry, the knowledge of microbial activity is still in its infancy compared to the resources available to specialist cheesemakers.  In France, Spain and Italy, the knowledge is undoubtedly well researched and documented but very little of that makes its way to the UK.  However, with resources like the Specialist Cheesemakers Association and its technical support, as well as the work documented on the website https://microbialfoods.org, being placed at Westcombe Dairy has meant Paul has the resources to understand the process of making salumi in greater detail.

In the initial stages, Paul and Tom Calver felt that the microbial life or biota of the dairy and storeroom could inform the development of the charcuterie.  To that end, some of the farm’s Duckett’s Caerphilly cheeses were brought into the storeroom to be brushed and turned, distributing the rind cultures throughout the room.  This proved successful, the moulds took, and it was evident that the same species that thrived on the rinds of the cheeses were equally happy on the salumi.  When they expanded into a different store, they expected to need to do the same again in order to seed the atmosphere with the desired cultures. What with one thing and another, it took a couple of weeks before an appropriate window in the schedule opened up to be able to do this.  By this point, however, the moulds had naturally started to grow on the maturing salumi anyway.  There is a theory within microbial research that all microbial life is available to us at any given time. The conditions of the things on which it settles is what governs the varieties of organisms that grow.  Paul’s lightbulb moment was when he realised that cheese and salumi while seeming like different foodstuffs have a lot in common.  Both are composite products taking animal fats and proteins (in the one case from milk and in the other from meat), acidifying them, adding salt and reducing moisture for preservation.  When you look at it this way it becomes less surprising to see that similar microbes are happy on salumi as well as on cheese.

This is not to say that you can’t change parameters to prioritise certain moulds or bacteria if you know they are more beneficial to flavour.  At one point in his salumi journey of discovery, Paul found blue/green moulds growing too prolifically some batches of salumi which were contributing an earthiness and a prickly heat to the flavour, which wasn’t desirable.  After speaking to a few different cheesemakers for advice, he investigated all the parameters a cheesemaker would when a cheese isn’t behaving: pH, moistures, temperature of the room, air flow, humidity.  He realised that localised humidity on the surface of the salumi was key to its development and that by altering the parameters such as air flow or humidity of the maturing rooms, this could be steered in the direction he wanted.

Ideally, he looks for a progression of moulds from a base coat of powdery white penicillium to further progression into limited blue/green and grey moulds.  A cheese rind will develop with a similar progression from yeasts as the first organisms to grow on the fresh cheese’s acidic surface then, as they begin to reduce the acidity, geotrichums, penicilliums and eventually blue moulds or in the cases of ripe Brie de Meaux red/orange spots.

In terms of microbial activity, it’s lactobacillus bacteria that are present for fementation and acidification just as with cheese.  For flavour development, a couple of key bacteria are Staphylococcus xylosus and carnosus.  Interestingly Staphylococcus xylosus creates a peachy pink hue and is commonly found on the rinds of washed rind cheeses when they reach maturity.  Given that the flavour of these cheeses is often described by reference to ham, bacon, cured meats, it is perhaps not surprising that their role in the development of salumi is to enhance the flavours of the cured meats themselves as the proteins are broken down.

In each area of Westcombe Farm, the spirit of respecting and developing the ecosystem prevails and dovetails.  Initially the Duckett’s Caerphilly cheeses informed the development of salumi but having learned about the importance of surface humidity, this knowledge has helped develop how the cheeses are stored and matured.  Just as Edith Cannon, over a hundred years ago, instinctively made cheese with the Brickells, today Richard Calver applies that same level of detail and reactivity to the soil and pasture health and Tom Calver does the same in the dairy, letting the milk lead the cheese make, measuring and reacting accordingly.  And Paul too is continually learning, experimenting, adapting and letting the meats govern how he treats them.  By doing this he creates delicious cured meats that respect the amazing quality of the pork and veal that goes into them and the respectful, regenerative and holistic farming that created those amazing ingredients in the first place.

We sell two of the cured meats from Westcombe Farm (as well as their Duckett’s Caerphilly of course): Westcombe Saucisson and Finocchiona.  The Saucisson is a mixture of Gothelney Pork, pork fat and Westcombe veal seasoned with garlic and black pepper resulting in a richly savoury, umami led brothy flavour. The Finocchiona is a veal saucisson mixed with the Gothelney pork fat and seasoned with wild fennel seeds from Sicily which is aromatic and silky in texture.  Both have just been made available on our online shop and are well worth getting your hands on!