After recently hiring the first cheesemaking apprentice in Tottenham for 100 years the Tottenham & Wood Green Independent got amongst the milk to find out what urban cheese is all about.

Tucked away on a non-descript industrial estate just north of White Hart Lane in Tottenham is Wildes Cheese - The Urban Cheesemaker.

Walking into the tiny, two unit operation you would be hard pressed to know it was a cheese factory as there is no external signage and the factory itself is very understated.

However once you meet Tottenham’s jolly cheesemaker Philip Whilton that all changes very quickly. Flamboyant Philip is a larger than life character who is full of laughter and passion for what he does.

He explains: “After being made redundant four years ago I wanted to do something to be proud of, that at the end of the day I could say ‘I did that’.

“People could love it or hate it I almost didn’t care. Clearly I love eating so I picked something I loved.

"Cheese is pure magic, a form of alchemy. You take a ubiquitous product like milk and then with a little sprinkling of magic and months later you have cheese; it’s a wow.”

We started off the day with a lesson about the value and quality of milk with Philip explaining that only fresh milk from the farm can make the kind of cheese he aspires to, and don’t get him started on the stuff you buy in the supermarket.

As a group we would be making soft cheese, hard cheese and Mozzarella throughout the day and we started by mixing bacteria cultures and rennet into our milk, stirring and maintaining the temperature of the mixture.

The cheesemaking was interspersed with bursts of Donna Summer from our host and a tour of his variety of refrigerators, each designed to maintain conditions for their huge variety of cheeses.

We then moved on to mixing our curds and whey, which was literally a hands on process requiring elbow-deep participation.

Once the curds had been churned a few times we separated the whey by draining it through cloths by hand. Normally a waste product, whey has become popular with bodybuilders in recent years as it is almost pure protein and hence good for building muscle.

Half way through the day we were treated to lunch consisting of all the cheeses made at Wildes accompanied by an enormous salad. The cheeses made here are all original recipes and it shows in the unique flavours and textures they produce. The Ellis cheese, a hybrid of Brie and Cheddar was a highlight indeed.

After packing our hard cheese into moulds and flavouring our soft cheeses with whatever we liked, from an array of herbs, spices and flavourings, it was on to the Mozzarella.

Being a lifelong Tottenham resident this is not something I ever imagined doing in N17 I have to say.

Explaining what makes Tottenham cheese special Philip said: “We make it properly, we make original cheese and we want to be a part of our community.

“Also the sheer lunacy of it all here, there’s plenty of laughing, joking and a bit of swearing we have fun while we make cheese.”

The Mozzarella was finely diced and then placed into near boiling water for it to bind back together.

Then with bravery and asbestos hands, you remove the blob from the water and begin to stretch it as much as you can, a process which gives Mozzarella its unique bouncy texture.

Mr Whilton praised my ball making abilities and the roundness of the resulting cheese orbs which I was pleased about given I had near scalded my hands in the process.

Wildes' new apprentice certainly has much to learn from Philip and his cheeses in this unique, quirky environment.

At the end of the day I had three different cheeses to take home, a thorough lesson in cheesey values and a new appreciation for the burgeoning entrepreneurial spirit emerging in Tottenham.