Following sell-out success last year, the Giant Welsh Cheese Advent Calendar is back for Christmas 2022.
Created by The Welsh Cheese Company in Taffs Well, the enormous advent calendar, which costs £164, is packed with 24 individual portions of artisan Welsh cheese – including favourites from some of the best cheesemakers from across Wales; Caws Cenarth, Caws Teifi, Pant Mawr Cheeses, The Snowdonia Cheese Company, Brooke’s Dairy and Y Cwt Caws.
Containing a whopping 4.2 kilograms of cheese, the extravagant calendar is made up of four separate triangles. Each individual triangle measures 51cm wide by 32.5cm tall and is designed to be placed in a fridge separately for storage. When the triangles are arranged together to create a Christmas-tree-shape, the calendar measures up at more than a metre wide.
The Giant Welsh Cheese Advent Calendar was initially created as a one-off for last Christmas– a bit of fun for Welsh Cheese Company founder, Tom Pinder. He said, “We thought it would be wonderful to bring a whole range of brilliant Welsh cheeses together in a giant advent calendar – but to be honest, we didn’t know if people would actually buy it or not.”
But with both the Giant and the Mini Welsh Cheese Advent Calendars completely selling out last year, Tom says it was a no-brainer to bring them back for Christmas 2022.
“It turns out, people love the idea; we’ve already had customers emailing us to ask if the calendars will be going on sale again. Whilst four kilos of cheese did sound bonkers, everything lasted until at least the new year, so it was perfect for people hosting big gatherings over the festive period. We just had to do it again!”
The 2022 Giant Welsh Cheese Advent Calendar is priced at £164 with free home delivery, and the 2022 Mini Welsh Cheese Advent Calendar – which contains a selection of six cheeses and weighs 1.3 kilograms – is priced at £43.
What do you get?
- Cenarth Brie – Rich and Creamy Brie style Cheese (200g)
- Bouncing Berry – Mature Cheddar Cheese with Sweetened Dried Cranberries (200g)
- Heb Enw – Goats Cheese (120g)
- Cryf – Extra Mature Cheddar (200g)
- Angiddy – Soft Brie-Style Cheese (150g)
- Red Storm – Vintage Red Leicester (200g)
- Tysilio – Goats Cheese (180g)
- Harlech – Cheddar with Horseradish and Parsley (150g)
- Beechwood – Naturally Smoked Mature Cheddar (200g)
- Perl Wen – Creamy White-Rinded Cheese (200g)
- Organic Halloumi (180g)
- Caws Preseli – Soft White-Rinded Cheese (200g)
- Truffle Trove – Extra Mature Cheddar with Black Summer Truffle (150g)
- Black Sheep – Creamy Sheeps Cheese (150g)
- Tintern – Cheddar with Onions, Chives and Shallots (150g)
- Ffetys – Feta Style Cheese (120g)
- Ffili – Light, Creamy Organic Caerffili (200g)
- Smoked Heb Enw – Goats Cheese (120g)
- Drewi Sant – Mead-Washed Medium-Soft Cheese (200g)
- Ruby Mist – Mature Cheddar with Port and Brandy (200g)
- Y Fenni – Cheddar with Wholegrain Mustard and Ale (150g)
- Smoked Cerwyn – Oak-Smoked Cheddar (200g)
- Black Bomber – Extra Mature Cheddar (200g)
- Perl Las – Creamy Blue-Veined Cheese (200g)
Other quirky Welsh cheese gifts from the Welsh Cheese Company include the Welsh Cheese Christmas Cake – an impressive centrepiece designed to bring people together over the party season, priced at £72.30. The bottom tier consists of 1.2kg Cenarth Brie, a French-style classic from Caws Cenarth. The second layer consists of Caerfai Caerffili, a traditional, organic Caerffili cheese made on a family farm just outside the UK’s smallest city, St Davids. The top two tiers are made up of 200g of Perl Las blue and 150g of Black Sheep – a delicate, creamy, wax-covered ewe’s milk cheese from West Wales.
