The shop
A delicatessen is a counter first, and ours comes with a cellar under it, a red slicer beside it, a wine shelf behind it, six tables in the window and twenty chairs that come out on a Thursday. Each has a page with what it costs and how it works.
01
Twenty-four cheeses at a time, a third of them Welsh, cut from the wheel to the weight you ask and tasted before they are wrapped: hard and soft, cow, goat and sheep, mild to fierce. Every label carries the milk, a strength from one to five, the country and the price per hundred grams, and the cheese page filters them by milk and strength.
From £2.
02
Cured ham, salami, chorizo, coppa and bresaola, sliced to order on the red slicer, from two Welsh curers, a farm in Somerset and three Spanish producers: a Carmarthen ham, a Welsh lamb salami, a fennel salami, Iberico from acorn-fed pigs. Olives, anchovies, tins and the rest of the deli on the shelves behind.
Carmarthen ham £5.
03
Pick a basket (a box, a wicker basket or the big hamper) and what goes in it from about twenty things off the shelves: cheeses, charcuterie, chutneys, crackers, wine, chocolate, honey. The hampers page keeps a running total and says how far you are from free delivery in the Vale over £75. Packed on the day with wood wool and a handwritten card; posted anywhere in Britain for £9.95.
Baskets from £6 to £18, then what you put in it; most hampers come to £50 to £120.
04
Sixty bottles on the back wall, chosen by Rhys to go with what is on the counter: a dozen under £12 for a Tuesday, a Welsh shelf with a sparkling from the Vale and two whites from Monmouthshire, sherry and port for the blues, cider and perry for the Caerphilly. Ask what goes with the cheese you have just bought and he will say.
From £9 to £45 a bottle; a dozen under £12.
05
From half past eleven to half past two, Monday to Saturday: sandwiches made to order on sourdough from the bakery across the road with whatever is on the counter, a soup, and the lunch board for one with three cheeses, two meats, chutney and bread at £14. Six tables by the window, takeaway in paper, a glass of wine from the shelf.
Sandwiches from £6.
06
Most Thursdays at seven the shop closes, the tables come together and twenty people taste six cheeses and three wines with Ffion and Rhys, sometimes with the maker who made them. Themed: Welsh cheese, the blues, goat's and sheep's, the Christmas board. £28 a seat, the seats left listed, booked on the order page.
£28 a seat with six cheeses and three wines; the maker evenings £35.
Where it comes from
A third of the counter: a Caerphilly from a Carmarthenshire farm in two ages, a goat's cheese from a herd on the Gower, a blue from near Narberth, a Gouda-style from the Teifi valley, a sheep's cheese from near Lampeter. Most of them we have visited, and the makers come to the evenings.
Small farms that milk their own herds: a cloth-bound Cheddar from Somerset, a Lancashire from a family that has made it for four generations, a Camembert-style from Hampshire, a flying-saucer sheep's cheese from Warwickshire, and the Christmas Stilton.
Comté from a cooperative in the Jura that Ffion worked at, Roquefort from the caves, Époisses for the brave, a Manchego and a smoked Idiazabal from Spain, a Parmigiano broken from the wheel. Chosen to sit beside the Welsh ones, not to replace them.
The maker is on every label and on the cheese page. The monthly newsletter tells one maker's story; the evenings bring them to the table. We would rather sell you a cheese with a name than a cheese with a brand.
Choose the basket and what goes in it from the shelves; the total runs as you go and tells you how far you are from free delivery in the Vale over £75. Packed with wood wool and a handwritten card; posted anywhere in Britain for £9.95.
