Meet the Makers: Sparkenhoe Farm

What makes our business so special is the close relationship we have with our producers. We started this journey to champion everything that’s great about small British cheesemakers, and to this day, that’s exactly what we continue to do.

We think it’s important that our team understand where the cheeses we serve come from, who makes them and just how much work goes into every wheel. So, each month, we take a group of the team out to visit one of our producers.

It’s a chance to get out of the restaurant, meet the makers, see the cheesemaking process up close and, of course, eat some delicious cheese right there on the farm where it was made.

(Yes, we do have jobs available if this sounds right up your street...)

Last month, a small group of us headed to Sparkenhoe Farm in Leicestershire to spend the day with the Clarke family and see their cheesemaking process from start to finish.

Jo and David Clarke started making cheese at Sparkenhoe in 2005, producing the first raw milk farmhouse Red Leicester to be made in over 50 years.

In the two decades since, they’ve continued to experiment and expand what they make. Alongside their famous Red Leicester, they now produce Sparkenhoe Blue, a raw milk Stilton-style cheese which can’t carry the Stilton name, as well as two newer, softer washed-rind cheeses: Upton and Redemore.

Today, the cheesemaking is overseen by Jo and David’s son, Will, who showed us around the farm, introduced us to their cows and took us into their incredible maturing room, where hundreds of wheels of Red Leicester sit patiently.

We were able to follow the whole cheesemaking process, right from the very first stages, and even got stuck in ourselves, helping to ladle the curds for a batch of Sparkenhoe Blue.

These producer visits give our team a much better understanding of just how special the cheeses we serve really are. They give us stories to take back to our restaurants and share with our guests, but more importantly, they remind us why we started The Cheese Bar in the first place: to champion brilliant British cheese and the people who make it.