Neal’s Yard Dairy (UK)

About Neal’s Yard Dairy

We buy cheese from about seventy cheesemakers on farms around Britain and Ireland and we sell the cheese in our two shops in London and to shops and restaurants all over the world.
Our main aim is to keep in close contact with cheesemakers on one hand and customers on the other and above all to be in very close contact with all the cheese passing through our hands. We visit some cheesemakers very often; I select our cheddars by visiting the West Country every eight weeks and tasting through young cheese to select the batches that will be matured on for us. Apart from trying to find the best cheese available this is also when the cheesemaker can get a sense of how their cheeses are being received by customers.

Many of the cheeses we buy are either matured on the farm or in our own maturing rooms in Bermondsey which are in brick railway arches under the main line from London Bridge to Dover. The insulation provided by the venerable Victorian brick work helps us maintain good conditions for the cheese: humid and cool. A team of five take care of the cheese, turning the cheeses and sometimes brushing or washing them until they ripen.

The mature cheese is sent out to our own shops or in our own vans through London or by trucks all over the world. But our job doesn’t stop there. A carefully selected and perfectly ripened cheese can suffer in transit or at its destination so we do our best to keep in contact with customers to ensure all is well.

The website has taken a long time to prepare and I hope it gives good background information. But it is no substitute for coming into our shops, or shops and restaurants that we supply, and tasting and talking about the cheese.
Randolph Hodgson

Neal’s Yard Dairy website