Neal's Yard Dairy

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We select, mature and sell farmhouse cheese from the UK and Ireland. We work with about 40 cheesemakers.

We visit them regularly to taste their cheese with them and select the batches we want to mature and sell. Amongst the cheeses we select there is a great deal of variability. Cheese can change hugely, depending on how it is treated. We have a range of temperature and humidity controlled maturation facilities at our warehouse in London, run by a team who are dedicated to ensuring that we sell our cheese at its best. As the cheese is maturing we continue to taste through the stock to ensure we are aware of how it is developing over time. The essence of what we do has changed very little since our founding director Randolph Hodgson began seeking out farmhouse cheesemakers to supply our first shop in the early 1980’s. We believe that the time and energy we invest in understanding cheesemaking, selection and maturation gives us the necessary experience to source much of the best cheese available in the UK and Ireland.

16/10/2026

There is a reason many of the best known, most well-loved cheeses in the world are made exclusively with raw milk. ‘Raw milk cheese is more complex,’ says our Technical Director Bronwen Percival. ‘If it wasn’t, we’d all bring out the pasteurisers and call it a day.’
Read more in our blog ‘Why raw milk cheese is worth it’ - link in bio.

14/10/2026

RAW MILK CHEESE DAY - SATURDAY 17th OCTOBER

Join us, along with other cheese shops across the country, in celebrating raw milk cheese!

MAGDALEN Cheese & Provisions
Jericho Cheese Company
Chorlton Cheesemongers
Mons Cheesemongers
Borough Cheese Company
North Street Cheese Shop
shepherdsbushcheese

Unbroken, Particular, Exacting

11/10/2026

Colston Bassett Stilton cheese scones.

10/10/2026

It is Stilton week, and we are celebrating what is known as the ‘King of British cheese’. Stilton is one of a small number of cheeses in the UK with PDO status - a geographical indication given to iconic foods associated with a particular process and place. For Stilton, the place is the East Midlands and cheese must be produced in Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, or Derbyshire. There are only five dairies who produce and sell Stilton, all based in these counties. The cheese we sell is made by Colston Bassett Dairy, which was set up as a cooperative in 1913 and is still owned by a handful of local residents and the farmers who supply the milk. They are also the only one that continues the traditional process of ladling the curds from the vat to the cooling trays entirely by hand: an important step in achieving a smooth, rich-textured cheese. The milk is sourced from farms within 1½ miles of the dairy, and the head cheesemaker, Billy Kevan, is only the fourth person to have held the post in more than a century.

Billy is a long-standing friend of Neal’s Yard Dairy, having worked with us for many years to perfect the recipe for the Stilton we buy: a buttery, silky cheese with an elegant sweetness. As well as hand-ladling the curds, Billy uses an animal rennet in our Stilton. The piercing (by which the cheese is quite literally pierced to allow air in to activate the mould) takes place later in the maturation process in order to strike the right balance between creamy, flavoursome paste and blue mould.

09/10/2026

Eileen’s Westcombe Cheddar, potato and onion pie.

08/10/2026

September.

Soft cheese walkthrough.

Montgomery’s Cheddar potato and leek gratin for staff lunch.

Neal’s Yard Creamery

Crumble cut Mrs Kirkham's Lancs at Defender Burghley Horse Trials

St. JOHN Restaurant at Mrs Kirkham's Lancs

The view outside the make room Neal’s Yard Creamery

30/09/2026

We took some of the chefs from Bubala to Herefordshire to meet Katie Cordle, who makes the halloumi-style cheese served in their restaurants

Katie makes Herefordshire Frier and sheep’s milk yoghurt in a tiny dairy in Herefordshire called Long Lane. Everything in the space is on wheels to save room, while pots and pans hang from the ceiling. There is not a thing in the room that does not serve a purpose.

22/09/2026

Last week we headed up with some of the team from St John to visit the Kirkhams and learn how to make Lancashire.

As well as making cheese, we ate a Lancashire hotpot made by Graham’s mum, Ruth, followed by apple and blackberry crumble. The St John team brought Eccles cakes, which have long been served with Lancashire at St John.

09/09/2026

Some of the best ideas start with a visit. In the years before 2012, Randolph Hodgson, then leading Neal’s Yard Dairy, travelled to Aurillac, in the mountains of central France, to meet Dr Marie-Christine Montel at her INRA cheese-research institute. He came back convinced that the enlightened thinking he’d encountered there, especially around raw-milk cheese, was something British producers and regulators needed to hear firsthand and suggested bringing those scientists to the UK. Bronwen Percival, who at that point was managing the cheese buying for Neal’s Yard Dairy, took the idea and ran with it, and the Science of Artisan Cheese conference was born.
Fourteen years and eight editions later, its mission is unchanged: to get makers, scientists and regulators into one room, and to find the places where a cheesemaker’s problems and science’s most interesting questions turn out to be one and the same.

Read more on The Science of Artisan Cheese Conference in our latest blog - link in bio.

08/09/2026

Beans on toast, lots of Bungay Butter and grated Hafod.

Address

London

Telephone

442075007520

Website

http://www.nealsyarddairy.co.uk/

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