White Lake Cheese - Meet The Maker

I have been a big fan of Roger and White Lake Cheese for a long time now. I included White Lake Cheese in my 2022 Locally Sourced Christmas Meal post and after an email asking if I could come and interview Roger, we first met in person in February 2023 when I visited him at Higher Bagborough Farm.

Roger is very passionate about his craft and has an abundance of energy and creativity. There is generosity and fun in everything Roger does and I think that really shines through in his answers to the questions below. Enjoy.

Tell us about you Roger

I grew up, right here in Pylle, on our family farm and was determined that I didn’t want to be a farmer. I did an engineering degree and then worked as an engineer on tractors for about 5 years. During that time, I realised that I really didn’t enjoy working for other people and that I needed to be my own boss and it looked like the best way to do that was to come back to the farm!

I need to be kept busy - I probably would be diagnosed with ADHD if I was at school these days! I am always coming up with new ideas and it's fantastic to be able to realise those ideas and not have to depend on someone else’s authorisation but to just get on with them.

My passion for cheese has given me the opportunity to combine two of my other loves – travel and learning and/or sharing my knowledge. I have been able to travel to places like India and the Middle East, and of course France, and find out about how they produce cheeses, and what is particular to them, as well as teaching them our methods and what we've learned.

Tell us more about White Lake Cheese

At White Lake cheese we produce 35 different types of artisan cheese. We produce 19 different goat's cheeses, 7 different sheep's cheeses and 3 cheeses made from Guernsey cows milk.

We have our own herd of French Alpine goats which give us more than enough goats milk. Our Guernsey cow's milk comes from a local farm and our sheep's milk comes from other small farms.

We use a completely artisanal method to produce our cheeses, with everything being hand poured and then looked after by our Head Affineur – who hand washes them daily if needed, depending on the type of cheese, or moves them to a different maturing room. She basically checks they are being looked after in the way that particular cheese needs and only when she is happy with the cheese, are they passed on to our wrapping room, where each one is hand wrapped and labelled.

This ensures we produce our cheeses to the highest quality and make sure they leave us in the perfect condition to reach the consumer.

Why did you set up the business?

My family were traditional cow's milk cheddar makers until the late 1990s when cheddar was becoming more mass produced, and it became very difficult to compete with some of the bigger producers. When I came back to the farm I realised that, from a business point of view, we needed to have an end product that was not in direct competition with the mass produced cheddars.

At that time nobody was really producing good goat's cheese in the UK and I, somewhat naively, thought, how hard can it be to look after goats? They are just like small cows! It turns out they are more like bigger and more annoying pigs…. However, we persevered and we do love our herd, they're all such characters! Having spotted that gap in the market here, and not being someone who gives up easily, I decided we would become goats cheese producers.

Being pioneers at this time meant there was no real knowledge base for us to dip into, especially in the UK goat's cheese market, and we had to learn quickly from our own mistakes! This is one of the reasons that I love helping new entrants into the market who can learn from us.

I knew I wanted to start with a hard goat's cheese and then go onto a soft one, and again, when we started on the soft one, there weren't a lot of soft cheeses being produced in the UK so we did get it wrong a few times! We would test them out at Farmers Markets and find out what people liked and didn’t like and then would make a few tweaks until we got it right.

We still test out new products at Farmers' Markets today and we have got to know a lot of our customers and really value their feedback. Usually customers at these markets are passionate about produce; listening to them is one of our key product development strategies.

What’s new at White Lake?

We have recently launched a new small cheese onto the market called Shilling. This is very similar to a French style Crottin. It’s sold in small rounds, like a Crottin, and can be eaten fairly young, where it will be soft and have a milder flavour or it can be kept to mature, with the flavour developing with age and the cheese becoming harder. The French often keep this smaller cheese until it is completely hard and has a stronger flavour and then grate it onto dishes.

We also recently released a smoked goat’s cheese called Smo’King. This is a mildly smoked version of our goat’s carphilly, King of the Castle, hence its name. It has a wonderful gently smoked flavour with caramel notes.

And looking ahead, we are also working on a blue goat’s cheese which will be added to our range in the new year.

You guys always seem to be winning awards – is that the highlight or are there other things you consider the best bit about making cheese?

For me personally, the highlight of my job is developing new and exciting cheeses.

Obviously the awards are amazing to have and an accolade for the entire team, so they know they are doing a great job, and don’t just hear it from me! I also think the awards are a great tool for bringing different producers on and incentivising them to grow and improve their products.

Any key struggles and what are the lessons you've learnt?

Being an entrepreneur makes me not much of a ‘details’ person. I have always struggled to understand how cash flow works or how to do a proper business plan and so on. I therefore learnt early on to hire people that are better than me at the stuff I don’t like, or don’t want, to do! And even with the things I do like, we can always learn from others. I have had to learn to hand over responsibility to other people.

Any advice to other ‘makers’ that are just starting out or sitting at a crossroads?

Just take the plunge! Its ok to make mistakes – you have to take a leap of faith. Things won’t always go to plan but you need to learn to adapt quickly and learn from your mistakes. Never give up. Always ask for advice and help. Listen to other people in your industry or similar industries. You can never have too much knowledge. There are plenty of people in our industry that love to share what they know. Also trust other people to do certain jobs, they may actually know more than you!

The worse thing to do is not make a decision.

This may be difficult to answer, but what’s your favourite White Lake Cheese?

That is a hard question! I would say it was Pave Cobble for a long time but this summer I have loved our new Shilling. It’s fantastic on a cheeseboard, or in a salad, and you can cook with it. It’s such an adaptable cheese, and I think it has knocked Pave off its top spot for me!

They all have such great names - how do you decide what to call them?

It’s quite random! Sometimes I decide before I make it as I know what I want it to look like - so with the Pave Cobble I named it after the cobble stones ridden over during a famous French bike race so I made the shape to fit the name.

Shilling came from a conversation with a customer as we decided the shape was like a pound coin, but I liked the vintage sound of shilling over pound. I think we may do more currency based cheese names after this!

Tor is obviously after Glastonbury Tor. Lots of French soft goats cheeses are in a Pyramid so I wanted to do something similar, so it was recognisable, but with a very British point of difference!

English Pecorino was a struggle – as we really wanted everyone to know that it was made in the Pecorino style. So we just decided to keep it simple.

Rachel was after a girl one of our previous employees fancied!

And when get a moment to step away from cheese, where is your favourite local place to wine and dine?

Wraxall Vineyard, which is my idea of pure bliss.

The HydeAway – a great hidden bar in Frome

And for all out relaxation any bar or restaurant on the Beach in Goa.

Finally, what’s next on the road map for White Lake?

We are really excited to share with you that we have a new Cheese Room being built which will enable us to expand our range and service our customers even better than we currently do. As far as products are concerned, we have already been testing out a goat's yoghurt at Farmers' Markets so that will come to market soon, plus a blue goat's cheese as I mentioned above. And my brain is already churning on what our next new cheese will be, so watch this space!

White Lake's team manage to get themselves along to a lot of the local markets in and around Somerset so if you see them be sure to go and say hi, taste what they have on offer and buy some cheese!  You can put together the most delicious 'Cheese Board' for the upcoming festive season. Or you can head straight to their website to browse and order and there is even a beautifully named - "Wonky White Lake" section where you can find discounted cheese that's just as delicious. .