Neals Yard Dairy

Cheesemonger

When we opened, in Neal’s Yard, Covent Garden on July 4th 1979, we made fresh cheeses, crème fraîche and the first Greek Style yoghurt in the UK. To see us through our first winter, we began to buy some matured cheeses, initially from a wholesaler. Compared to the cheeses we made ourselves, it was difficult to sell these, because the wholesaler could not give us much information. After by chance receiving a sample of farm-made cheese in the post, we began to visit farms, taste and select cheese with the cheese-makers and buy directly from them. Armed with information from having seen the cheese made, tasted it in the stores and talked to the cheese-maker, we found these cheeses much more enjoyable to sell and our customers enjoyed hearing all about them too.

Visiting cheese-makers regularly is now the mainstay of how we select buy our cheese. Once the cheeses are delivered to us in London, we taste them and judge whether to mature them or whether they should be sold straight away. We age them, where we think that the flavour will benefit, in temperature- and humidity-controlled rooms in our three railway arches in Bermondsey. We now have two shops, one in Covent Garden and another in Borough Market.