5 best-selling cheeses with The Mousetrap Cheese Shop

Our biggest seller is Worcester Hop. It’s a tangy tasty cheddar from Croome Cuisine in Worcester, covered in toasted hops. I think it’s a good seller because its great for a gathering and will suit a variety of tastes. It’s a blended cheddar, so the consistency of flavour and creamy texture is there and the hops out the outside give it an interesting twist.

We’re very lucky to have Neals Yard Creamery as one of our local dairies. Their Finn is a great seller and one of my personal favourites. It’s an unctuous soft cheese, with added double cream and milk from the farm next door to the dairy, lovely when young and moosey with a lactic tang and developing great mushroomy notes as it matures and softens.

The amount of goat and ewes milk cheese we sell has gone up exponentially over the time we’ve had the shops. Whether this is due to the expanded knowledge of the health benefits of these cheeses, or whether it’s just because they’re gorgeous, I don’t know! A fairly new cheese we’ve been selling for a few years is our local Valley Drover. Ewes milk, made in the style of a Tomme, it’s a gorgeous tasty cheese, traditionally made - it’s certainly getting a great following around here.

The amazing Isle of Mull has to be in this list. It’s a wonderful farmhouse cheese made with their own milk fresh from the cow. These cows, fed spent grain from the Tobermory brewery as well as their lovely pasture, do make some tasty milk. Isle of Mull is a wonderfully, slightly fruity cheddar style cheese with a great depth of flavour.

The last cheese on my list is the wonderful Welsh Perl Las. Strong but delicate, creamy with lovely lingering blue overtones, Perl Las is fantastic on a Peters Yard Crispbread. If you’re ever in the area, I can certainly recommend a trip to both the lovely little town of Cenarth as well as the Dairy, it’s a lovely day out!

Find out more about Claire and The Mousetrap Cheese Shop in our latest issue of Inspirational Cheese Retailers - download for free here.