The Hammock Papers: Treasures.

15 February 2026

Treasures.

Having worked in food service for over 25 years, a word that best encapsulates the eating experience for me is satisfaction. When it comes to products like cheese, it's the difference between Kraft and craft. The sliver of aged, cloth-bound farmhouse cheddar that is need to provide the most pleasant gustatory fulfillment is minuscule when compared to the number of pieces of individually wrapped cheese-product required to achieve the same vilely-satiated result.

The highest quality cheeses are not produced in industrial settings, but rather on farms, generally those that have been in families for generations, if not centuries, by cheese makers who have their own herds, and who created their art by hand, under increasing oversight and artistic encroachment by government regulation.

Whether it's estate-bottled wine or olive oil, extravecchio balsamic vinegar, or an honest loaf of handmade sourdough, it is impossible to get high-quality products from low-quality processes. These processes take time and expertise to perfect (a word that's hard to believe in, but in this realm it exists), taking generations, even centuries of technique create such results. This is the secret ingredient that never shows up on a nutrition label: time.

Find a Mom and Pop cheesemonger, talk to them, ask about their relationship to producers, listen, taste, explore. Avoid the kitsch of espresso pecorino, hot honey prosciutto, and infused oils. You'll get what you pay for ... guaranteed. Unless you find such examples at merchants of neglect like Whole Foods, who should be flogged for what they've been able to get away with from decades at their cheese counters (or maybe it's Hell Foods customers who deserve the lash).

Academy of Cheese has Harvey & Brockless' Tom Badcock ...

One of the most striking aspects of Tom’s worldview is his deep affinity for Japanese craftsmanship – an ethos rooted in shokunin and monozukuri, where devotion, precision, and a lifelong pursuit of mastery are not only expected, but revered.

Tom’s understanding of this philosophy was cemented during a three-week visit to Japan last year, travelling with his wife and immersing himself in a culture that places extraordinary value on craft. He speaks with real passion about witnessing how artisans dedicate their entire lives to perfecting a single product, striving to do their work to the very best of their ability – every day, for decades.

What struck him most was not just the commitment of the craftsmen themselves, but the response of society around them. In Japan, mastery earns respect. Craftsmen are treated as living heritage: valued not only for what they produce, but for the cultural continuity they represent. Some are even formally recognised as Living National Treasures.

For Tom, the parallels with British farmhouse cheesemakers are unmistakable, and deeply frustrating. “Their skills are irreplaceable,” he says. “Once they’re gone, they’re gone.” He believes cheesemakers here embody the same devotion and mastery yet are too often undervalued by the society they serve.

The Academy's Cheese Library.

Their blog is an outstanding resource for ...

Cheese Buying and Distribution, Industry Knowledge, Language & Communication, Regulation & Good Practice
Tasting
Iconic Cheeses
Affinage
Milk Production & Cheesemaking
Presenting and Serving

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL