Welcome to Foodlink30 Cheshire

Cheshire is not only one of the most glamorous of the North West’s counties with the highest number of millionaires per square mile but is steeped in history and still retains much of its traditional rural life. 

Its landscape includes the Cheshire Plains with its long history of diary farming.  Some regard Cheshire milk as simply the best due to the mineral content found within the rich sandy soil - an attributing factor in the amazing award winning dairy products.  Beneficiaries of this include the many ice cream farms, traditional & innovative cheese makers and yoghurt manufacturers.

Cheshire cheese is what people instantly think of when associating Cheshire with produce.  Cheshire cheese appears to be Britain’s oldest named cheese, and it is mentioned in the Doomsday Book at the end of the 11th Century. Cheshire cheese comes in a range of colours and flavours – the traditional tangy, salty white, crumbly red and veined blue Cheshire.  To find out more about food history click here.

New Cheshire potatoes are one of our favourite products from the county smothered in butter with a good spring salad.  But it is not just potatoes which the rich soil is home to. A wide variety of traditional English vegetables are grown in the county and the soil and climate have also proved to be a very good base for Chinese style salads and vegetables mainly around the Frodsham plateau.

From the vast plains of Cheshire where the world looks very flat there are hilly retreats such as Willington & Kelsall Hills, which not only offer spectacular views sometimes referred to as a little slice of Switzerland but a microclimate for fruit growers and pick your own farms.

Cheshire is also well known for its salt production with the towns of Nantwich, Northwich, Middlewich & Leftwich all named after the natural brine /salt reserves which they were built on as "wich" meant salt. Northwich is still a major salt manufacturing town and the salt mines offer a rare tour of the underworld of Cheshire.

The waterways of Cheshire also offer a taste of history with not only some fantastic country pubs serving local produce, but also the occasional watermill. Bunbury Watermill is one of these open to the public and still producing excellent stone milled flour.

Moving away from history, Cheshire is also home to an array of award winning farm shops, innovative chocolate and bakery producers, fabulous microbreweries and some exceptional gastro pubs.