NEAL’S YARD DAIRY: UNDERNEATH THE ARCHES



If you have a conversation about cheese in the UK, it can’t be more than a matter of moments before someone mentions the name Randolph Hodgson and then the name of his company, Neal’s Yard Dairy.

There would be little or, indeed, any exaggeration to suggest that, without the single minded determination of Randolph, there would be few cheeses of any note being prepared in the UK at all.

Over the last twenty years, he and his growing team of enthusiasts have helped build up not only the reputation of British cheeses at home and abroad, but also the number of people making cheese to the extent that they now number in the hundreds.

When I encounter, as I have already on EAT MY GLOBE, cheese makers around the country, the respect for Neal’s Yard and what it stands for is tangible in their desire to make sure that they don’t let him down.

For my own part, I have loved NYD since the first time I walked into the original shop, just of Covent Garden, as a callow late twenty something and had tastes of about 10 cheeses offered before I could mention the words “ Dairylee Cheese Triangles”

It was one of those epiphinal moments. A moment, like taking your first sip of a truly great wine, that stays with you and changes the way you think about a certain food forever. That one visit has probably cost me thousands of pounds in the last ten years and I know I am not the only one.

Their two stores are among the first places that I send any visitor, new to London, to and few come away disappointed.

The secret of their success? Well, the quality of the cheese is paramount, but that doesn’t mean a thing if you can’t get people to taste the stuff and this is where Randolph and his crew get it spot on again.

The level of training at NYD is pretty impressive. But it is not a wrote “this cheese comes from X and is made by Y” approach. The staff get involved not just with the cheese and the variations in its production, but with the makers too who they often go to visit. Because of this, there is a level of enthusiasm that is not matched by any other retailer I can think of in the UK and, perhaps, only by the good people of Zingerman’s (also on my list to visit) in Ann Arbor.

It was because of the enthusiasm of one of their staff, Lucy, that I was able to fulfil one of my biggest hopes for the trip visit the Neal’s Yard Dairy maturing rooms in the unlikely setting of three former railway arches in Tower Hill.

I bumped into Lucy at one of the monthly food fairs on Whitecross St. She was, unsurprisingly, handing out cheese from a big block to any one who was passing and I stopped for a taste, well of course I did.

We got chatting and she mentioned the maturing rooms and said there was now way I could Eat My Globe and not see them. Who was I to argue?

She scribbled the contact details of the people in charge of visits on a bit of paper and then scurried off to chat to someone else. Me? I rushed home and, the first thing I did was rocket off a mail to the good folk of NYD

There was no guarantee that they would let me be part of a visit. They are usually for customers only and, although free, are so popular that they take a credit card reference in case of no shows. Like everything else to do with Neal’s Yard, they do these things properly.

Fortunately, my luck was in. I explained what I was doing and when the book was to be published and the next thing I knew, an invitation was winging itself me-wards by e-mail and, a week or so later, I found myself walking through some of London’s nether regions before finding myself uscathed underneath the arches.

Neal’s Yard Cheesemonger, Chris George is in charge of the trips and you could not ask for a better guide. His passion for his job is tangible even when he has to show strangers in disposable hairnets around his sacred ground. It must be an interruption to his proper working day. But, if it is, he does not show it.





First of all, a potted history of the company and their arrival at the arches which, made of brick, are as close to caves as you are likely to get in the Tower Hill region. It’s all interesting stuff, particularly when Chris talks about the only four cheeses that NYD store that are not sourced from the UK. Can you name them? Sure you can. Parmigiana, a brie de meux, their sensational barrel aged feta and a comte . All the others, all from the UK.

Like so many industries, British Cheese making suffered from nearly twenty years of rationing where the only cheeses that could be legally made for sale were hard cheeses such as Cheddar which kept for longer and were easier to transport. Over time, people became used to the vacuum packed blocks of nothingness that are only just disappearing from our shelves and it has been God’s own task to persuade the Great British public to come back to the real thing.

It has also been hard to persuade new cheese makers in Britain to take challenges and this is where Neal’s Yard comes into its own. The level of support they give to suppliers large and small is unparalleled in any industry. In many cases, with new cheese makers, they commit to buying every cheese made, good and bad, to provide the new business with guaranteed income as they grow and learn their craft. Add that to regular visits from the experts at NYD and a genuine passion for seeing a new product develop and get to market and you can see why they are held in such high regard.

After the brief introduction, it was on to the fun stuff, a tour of the maturing rooms. A row of chilled walk in cabinets kept at different temperatures to control the aging process.



Chris George is a real cheese monger. He has his own favourite mould and everything. I can’t recall what it was called but it has enough letters in it to make any opponent throw a Scrabble board up in the air and storm off in a sulk. He has to take people around the arches twice a week and must be dying inside sometimes when faced by people like me who don’t know their flora from their bacteria and who say things like “ugh, it looks off” when presented with a cheese developing a nice mould. But, if he is withering inwardly, you don’t get a glimpse. Ever the professional, you would think this was all new to him.

As we wandered, we tasted. God we tasted. We tasted young, we tasted old, we tasted ripe, we tasted immature, we tasted hard, we tasted soft and all points inbetwee. And, it was good.



The majority of farmhouse cheeses in the UK are based on French originals. Some are good, many are getting better all the time. But, there is one area where we continue to hold sway and, at the end of the tour, Chris took us down to a series of cavernous racks filled to the gunwhales with enormous wheels of God’s good Cheddar.

As Chris explained, you can actually make a cheese anywhere in the world and call it Cheddar. It is not geographically protected. The reason being that the word Cheddar is a verb as well as a noun being a process called “cheddaring”

In true NYD style though, they have created a protection of their own and only sell three Cheddars all of which are from the right region. They sell other cheeses made in the Cheddar style, the most famous of which is the excellent, Lincolnshire Poacher. But, if you go into either of their stores and ask for the real stuff, you are presented with a choice of three. Westcombe, worthy of note because the owners took the risk of moving from the industrial production of block cheese back to making the good stuff. Keen’s, perhaps the oldest of the three and, of course, the mighty, Montgomery, a cheese so wonderfully, powerfully sexy that you want to rent it an apartment and visit it at weekends.



We tasted them all and, while the others were great. The Monty deserves its place at the top of the tree. A mineral crumbliness leading on to a mouth covering spread as the cheese dissolves in the mouth and a length of taste that stayed with me through most of my afternoon meetings. Such a thing of beauty that even just writing about it now makes me want to head out and buy some.



Before we finished, we sampled Neal’s Yard’s own first attempts at making a cheese for itself. Now that may surprise you. Certainly, they work hard with the suppliers on the recipe for the cheeses they bring in and certain makers will make different batches for NYD than, say Waitrose whose needs are very different. But, until recently, they had not made a cheese themselves.

Well now, you have Stitchelton. The name is taken from the original name for the town of Stilton. Chris was keen to point out that this was not Stilton though. They can’t call it that because it is made from unpasteurised milk where as, by definition, Stilton is made from treated milk.


They still have a way to go, but, as with everything else they do, I can see this being a success as they aim for a darker, richer flavour than Colston Bassett

And, that was the end of the tour. We deposited our hairnets in the bin which was a shame as I have become increasingly fond of these hairnet moments as I travel the globe, and Chris went off to get on with his proper job.

There were only three other people on the tour with me all from that rather splendid online farmer’s market Natoora. We all agreed that, as two hours on a blustery Thursday morning in Tower Hill go, it was one of the best.

Since my visit a week and a half ago, I have spent nearly £75 in Neal’s Yard Dairy. What can I tell you? It’s an addiction and I am in no rush to be cured.

CASHEL: A WHEY TO BLUE
There is, believe it or not, an association of Specialist Cheese makers. Well, of course there is. There is an association of everything these days. Who the hell are specialist cheese makers to think they can be so damn different? They are going to have an association whether they like it or not. Even, if they are a bit useless.

And, useless they were. Particularly when I tried to get in touch with their office in the leafy suburbs of Clerkenwell. You would have thought I had offered to come around there and molest their grandmothers rather than write about some of their membership. Ho hum.

In the end, I decided just to pick up the phone and speak to the cheese makers direct. Always the best way because the people making the food always get EAT MY GLOBE immediately.

Fortunately for me, the person on the other end of the phone was Sarah Furno who, with her husband Sergio, is now the driving force behind J&L Grub, the makers of Cashel Blue and she was more than happy to have me pay a visit.

While both Farmhouse cheeses, there are entire light years between Mileen and Cashel Blue. Where Mileen is the daily labour of one young man, Cashel Blue is the combined efforts of up to nineteen people including two full time cheese makers. Where Milleen clings firmly onto its home grown status, Cashel Blue is a cheese with aspirations. Where Quinlan Steele uses instinctive methods of cheese making, Sarah Furno uses regular tasting and assiduous notation, taken from her years in the wine business, to compare batches. Where Milleen is making about ten tonnes a year with little capacity to make more, Cashel Blue is currently topping out at around two hundred and seventy tonnes a year with ambitions to double that in a new state of the art unit.

While very different, what they do have in common though is the passion to make great cheese. Different methodology, the same end result, a fabulous product.

The hundred and fifty acre farm that houses Cashel Blue is a bit of a bugger to find and it took a couple of phone calls to guide me in. But, finally, I made my way up the sun dappled drive past a few bullocks grazing contentedly on pasture and made my way to the small portakabin that forms Cashel Blue HQ.

EAT MY GLOBE, it appears, is going to see me appear in a wide variety of overalls, Wellington boots and hair nets. Damn the EU and all their rules. I knew the moment that Sarah appeared in her outfit that I was going to have to don the silly garb. The things I do to live the dream. I trust you appreciate it?

Still, I realise that this is a serious business in an area where entire herds were wiped out and the economy devastated in recent years. So, when feet needed dipping in cleansing solution, I dipped like a good boy.

First, the tour. Four 500 gallon vats of milk with the rennet and starter sit while being given the loving attention of the two cheese makers. Once the curds and whey begin to separate the whey is drained off for pig feed and the curds drained futher and set into moulds.

Much of the equipment at Cashel Blue is state of the art and specially designed by Sarah’s father who founded the business. Being a child at heart, I was particularly beguiled by a wonderful machine that turns crates of cheese moulds like a wheel of fortune at a Victorian fairground.

Unlike hard cheeses, the moulds are not pressed and the weight of the cheese is the only thing which drains the water out.

After a few days, the cheese is then dipped in a brine solution and pricked to allow natural flora to create the blue which gives that unmistakeable tangy taste.

And, that’s it.

But, of course, it isn’t.

I had imagined that, once the cheese was made and put away to store it would get little attention, being sent out in batch order as required with some random sampling for quality control.

How wrong can one fat boy be in a lifetime?

In fact, it is only once the cheese is made, that Sarah and Sergio’s hard work really begins.

Every cheese is referenced. Not just by which on which day it was made, but by which of the four vats it was in, who made it, which milk was used and the temperature at which the milk was heated.

After a welcome cup of tea in the farmhouse kitchen, Sarah took me to a small counter in the packing room and produced a large red book in which detailed notes had been written. Sergio appeared with a number of more mature cheeses that were destined for Neal’s yard Dairy and we began to taste them to see which were up to snuff for that most exacting of partners.

First, a visual appraisal for the colour of the rind, then using the cheese tryer to pull out a small plug from the paste, for the spread of blue. Next, obviously, the taste. High acidity is a standard in blue cheeses but it should remain fresh to the tongue and produce a mouth watering effect.

Then, there is the creaminess which depends on the amount of fat in the milk on the day the cheese was made.

I don’t know why I should have been so surprised that a crafted product like this should vary so much from cheese to cheese, but I was and it is down to the skills of Sarah and Sergio and the cheese makers at Cashel to choose the right wheels for the right customers. For Neals Yard, more full on cheese with a good spread of blue. For the supermarkets, younger cheeses that are not so filled with blue and which will mature more slowly to allow for the shelf life the supermarkets demand.

After sampling the mature cheeses, I was put to work loading up some containers. (Hey, I am happy to earn my corn.) before we moved on to tasting some younger cheeses so Sarah could show me the difference in colour, taste and texture which is remarkable. Again, her note taking was extensive and every batch was graded and earmarked for particular customers.

By now, Sarah had, quite rightly had enough of me and had to spend the afternoon with her small son. Me? I had to go and find my B&B for the night. So, I said my farewells and headed off back to Cashel

A few days later, I walked down to Borough Market and to Neal’s Yard to try some of the cheeses I had seen being made. The Cashel Blue was slightly grainy, with a wide spread of blue, a high acidity and low fat feel in the mouth.

Perhaps I should send Sarah some tasting notes?

MILLEENS: MEN ( AND WOMEN) OF STEELE

Everyone, but everyone I spoke to about visiting cheese makers on this trip said “ oh you must call it ‘blessed are the cheese makers’ “ and, of course, they all thought they were the only ones to have thought about it. Bless them.

But, even if it is a well worn Python phrase, it would still be an appropriate description for my thoughts for the good people of Milleens and Cashel Blue. Bless them for letting me come and visit. Bless them for letting me take up so much of their time and for being so welcoming and bless them for making two (three in fact, if you count Crozier Blue – but more of that later) of my all time favourite cheeses.

When I was making my initial EAT MY GLOBE list, I was, of course, going to have some cheese makers on there. But who? Montgomery’s Cheddar was a frontrunner, as was Mrs Kirkham’s Lancashire and Gorwydd Caerphilly. But, my final choice was made during a visit to that cathedral to all that is good about cheeses from the British Isles, Neal’s Yard Dairy. When one of the young staff plied me with tastes of Cashel Blue and I ended up buying a big wedge of tangy, creamy, blue goodness. Alongside it, wrapped in its cellophane covering was a small round of wash rind Milleens. A lovely cheese, the assistant reminded me and, as they also pointed out, from the same part of the world.

So, that was me decided.

As seems to be ever the way on EAT MY GLOBE, when I got in touch with the people at Milleens and Cashel Blue, they could not have been more welcoming. Not only did they appreciate the idea of my trip, but welcomed the opportunity to talk about the thing they hold so dear.

It’s a long old drive from Cork Airport to Castletownbeer, the nearest town of any size to Milleens and most of it is spent behind tractors that, if they were going any more slowly, would be going backwards. It is, however, made bearable by the scenery. You know it is going to be pretty. You know that it is the stuff of picture postcards, but, the Beara peninsula in West Cork has to rank amongst the most astonishing countryside in The British Isles. Traipsing along at under twenty miles an hour for big chunks of a journey would usually have me on the edge of a stroke. Not here as I chilled out, listened to a bit of folky gaelic nonsense on the radio and took my time.

I was there soon enough and settled into my B&B before going out to hit the nightlife of Castletownbeer. Well, it was late afternoon by then, so the nightlife had finished for the day, obviously, so, after a dreadful early supper and a couple of pints of the black stuff, I slunk back to my room and got an early night.

Up bright and early the next morning, shaved and ready for some cheese, I drove the five miles to Eyries, the small hamlet which houses Milleens Farm.

When I puttered up the path to the rambling farmhouse, Quinlan was in the tiny cheese making unit turning the small wheels he had made a few days before. So, Norman, dragged a couple of rickety kitchen chairs out into the sunshine of farmyard and gave me a history lesson.

There are, I am told, sixty five farmhouse cheese makers in Ireland. Milleens was the first.

Originally, Norman was a professor of Philosophy at Trinity College and split his time between Dublin and the farm which he and his wife bought in the late seventies.

They started making their wash rind cheese for the same reason many cheese makers begin, to use up excess milk. In their case, from their solitary and wonderfully named cow, Brisket.

In true “you couldn’t make it up” fashion, they gave some to a friend, who ran a restaurant and she happened to serve some to one Declan Ryan, at the time, the owner of the only Michelin starred restaurant in Ireland, Arbetus in Cork. He demanded to know what it was and who made it and the next thing you know, it was the wash rind of choice for any self respecting cheeseboard where it remains to this day.

Well, of course it was not quite that easy. Both good luck and bad luck helped along the way. Good luck came in the rotund form of Jane Grigson who ambled up their path one day because she had heard about this wonderful cheese. Bad luck came in the “angel of death” form of BSE which destroyed their entire herd and so devastated them that they have never replaced it preferring to buy in their milk from neighbouring farmers. As Norman puts it “I just didn’t have the heart anymore”

By the turn of the millennium, thirty years of hard graft had begun to take their toll and there was a real chance that they would begin to go backward rather than forward. Enter Quinlan Steele. Not, as the name suggests, the hero in a mass market paperback espionage thriller, but the only son of the Steele offspring who stepped in when family matters meant that Veronica was not able to dedicate time to making the cheese she had lovingly developed.

At 26 and a graduate in IT, Quinlan is an unlikely hero for Milleens, but, hero he is. Taking over the cheese making while Norman crunches the numbers.

With the unending energy of youth and an aptitude for technology that allows him to plough through the internet in search of the latest papers on micro biology, you get the impression that Quinlan is set to take what is already a great cheese, to new levels.

Not that he tinkers with Milleens for the sake of it though. Jane Grigson told Norman Steele that she loved his cheese because it “was always different but always recognisably Milleens” and this artisanal approach is something that all concerned have taken to heart.

He may only have been in charge for four years but he has been around Milleens since he was small and his love of it is tangible with him freely admitting that he probably eats a small wheel a day.

After The Professor had given me the theory, The Student gave me the tour. In truth, not much to see, a small vat, some racks, a temperature controlled room and a place to wrap them and that’s it.

It is a small operation making a little under ten tonnes a year. To put that into context, Cashel Blue produce two hundred and seventy tonnes a year and some of the larger English farmhouse cheeses double that.

But, bear in mind that everything concerning Milleens cheese is done by hand. The filling of the vats and the mixing with starter and rennet. The straining of curds from the whey, the moulding and draining, the turning and, finally, the packing in cellophane and the labelling. Everything.

After the tour, Quinlan selected a likely specimen and we took it back into the farm kitchen where the three of us chomped on it over a cup of tea.

It was a young version of the cheese I love as the more mature cheeses are out of the door the moment they are ready. But, it still had all of the characteristics I love about Milleen. This is not a cheese for the weak hearted. Not a one schtick pony like Stinking Bishop, but a cheese with depth, character and an unmistakeable flavour even here in its youthful form. It ripens from the rind through the paste until, at its peak it is a strong cheese with immense depth.

The avuncular Norman filled the time with more stories. The time Floyd came to film in their kitchen, the time a Dept of Agriculture official told them he would have to get rid of his beard, the time he thinks ripening cheeses in a caused a postal walkout over working conditions. An endless flow and I wish that my time with them could have been the same. But, Quinlan had cheese to make and Norman had milk to collect.

Quinlan wrapped a selected cheese in some greaseproof paper as a parting gift and I stuck it in the bottom of my bag hoping that it would not cause a walk out by Aer Lingus staff over working conditions.

Now, I am back home and waiting for it to come to temperature before biting into a large hunk. When I do, I shall think of Norman and his beard and of Quinlan, the quiet, serious cheese maker who is making sure Milleens is still on fine cheese boards everywhere and will continue to be so for years to come.