Neal's Yard Dairy - Farm Cheeses from the Britisch Isles

In the late 1970s Nicholas Saunders set up a few businesses in Neal’s Yard, Covent Garden (London, UK). In 1979 on July 4th, Neal’s Yard Dairy opened selling Greek Style Yoghurts, Crème Fraiche and fresh cheeses. One of the cheesemakers was a youthful Randolph Hodgson, fresh from his food science degree, uninspired by the career route most food scientists were taking and looking for a job to tide him over until he worked out what he wanted to do. Luckily he found making and selling cheese fascinating and a couple of years later, Nick Saunders asked him to take over and become owner of the Dairy.

"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. We 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." Randolph Hodgson

Source: Neal's Yard Dairy