Producing the Goods

Single & Double Gloucester Cheese

There are records of Gloucester cheese being made as long ago as 1594. Originally made in many parts of the shire it became concentrated in the Vale of Berkeley on the east side of the river Severn.

Two kinds of cheese were made: Single and Double Gloucester, both shaped like a wheel or a millstone. In taste, Single Gloucester is light and creamy with a subtle flavour, wheras Double Gloucester is rich and tangy with a firm, dense, smooth texture. In the eighteenth century, cheese merchants persuaded the makers to add a red dye, such as carrot or beetroot juice, to make Double Gloucester look more distinctive. Annatto is used today, giving the cheese an orange-red colour.

Both cheeses were made from the rich milk of handsome Gloucester cattle. In the 1970s, to save Gloucester cattle from extinction (there were only 45 animals left in 1974), Charles Martell started making this cheese in the traditional way at his farm near Dymock. Now the number of Gloucester cattle has risen to seven hundred and both Single and Double Gloucesters are made by a handful of craft makers, including Martell.

From 1997 - again thanks to Martell - Single Gloucester has had Protected Designation of Origin status (PDO), meaning it can only legitimately be produced in Gloucesterhire, from cattle of the correct pedigree. In terms of food souvenirs, although it can be distributed nationally, the buyer can be sure of its place of origin - all the more reason for visitors to buy it in the Dymock area as a souvenir.

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