Isle of Mull cheese is a family run farm which began when Jeff and Chris Reade, and their sons, moved to Sgriob-Ruadh in 1979 from Somerset. The farm was derelict just outside the small town of Tobermory on the Isle of Mull. Over the next 40 years, together with their four sons Brendan, Matthew Garth and Joe, and driven by their own enterprise, ingenuity, skill, and hard work, they built a working farm including cow housing, a milking parlour, cheesemaking dairy and maturing cellars.
The farm began by supplying fresh milk to Mull and the neighbouring islands. Over the intervening years we have developed our farm to make dairy farming viable on our island. Today, all of our unpasteurised raw milk is used to make our Isle of Mull Farmhouse Cheese and Hebridean Blue Cheese.
Cheese produced from raw milk has many layers of flavours. At Sgriob-ruadh we endeavour to preserve the natural flora found in the milk (the terroir) by milking directly into the cheese vat. The evening milk has to be cooled, this heat is stored and we re-use it in the morning to warm the milk back up ready to be added to the warm morning milk with additional heat needed to finish the cheesemaking coming from a large log fuelled water heater. A truly sustainable and holistic way to produce cheese.
Summers are short on the island, so the herd of 130 or so Friesian, Brown Swiss, Swedish Red, Norwegian Red and Meuse Rhine Issel cows are housed in large sheds for the winter months, to protect them from the wild island weather. They are fed on a balanced diet of Hay, silage and spent grain husks, known as draff, from the distillery in Tobermory.
Summers are wonderful, bright and fresh with long days. The cows graze on rich organic grass. The seasons boundaries are often un-defined and the cows will happily shelter inside on the more refreshing days.
Over the years the cheese has matured with flavours that range from sweet and boozy to rich, savoury, and mellow.
Today Chris, Brendan, Garth and Shelagh Reade, along with the third generation, run the farm and business, also employing a number of staff. Our cheese is sold all over the world making its way onto menus in restaurants, hotels and into the cheesemongers, farm shops and delis.
We also have self-catering holiday lets and our Glass Barn farm shop and café which we open up seasonally.
We have tried to create a sustainable business; producing our own energy from wood, wind and water, and have recently upgraded to a larger wood chip boiler to help heat water for a future project. The milk is all produced from our own cows, bred by ourselves, and all going to make our cheese, maturing and selling it all at Sgriob-Ruadh Farm. Continuing our desire to be more sustainable, and as our pigs cannot drink all the surplus whey left over from the cheese making, we plan to turn it into a new product range. Keep an eye out for this and look forward to enjoying some island spirit alongside your cheese!
