Supporting a New Chapter for St Jude Cheese

Neal’s Yard Dairy has been working with cheesemaker Julie Cheyney for more than twenty years. The relationship began in the early 2000s when Julie and Stacey Hedges developed Tunworth cheese in Hampshire, a cheese widely regarded as the UK’s first truly world-class Camembert-style cheese.

After leaving Tunworth, Julie began the long process of developing a new project: St Jude Cheese. The early years were something of a labour of love. Julie experimented with recipes at home while also working shifts with Neal’s Yard Dairy’s maturation team, building her technical knowledge of soft cheeses and affinage.

St Bede, the newest cheese from Julie Cheyney at St Jude Cheese. 

In search of a more reliable supply of raw cow’s milk, Julie later moved production from Hampshire to Suffolk, establishing St Jude Cheese at Fen Farm Dairy. The farm’s high-quality raw milk and shared production facilities provided the foundations for the development of the cheeses now familiar to many customers: St Jude, followed by St Cera (a cheese whose development was spearheaded by our maturation team, as detailed by Lucas Zurdo in this 2024 essay) and later St Helena.

As both Fen Farm Dairy and St Jude Cheese grew, however, the team began looking for a dedicated space of their own alongside a reliable milk supply. In July 2025 they moved into a newly built creamery at the farm of Jamie and Lindsay Burroughs near Beccles, who already produce raw drinking milk.

Some of the Burroughs' herd near Beccles.

The Burroughs’ herd numbers around 500 cows, predominantly British Friesian with Ayrshire, Brown Swiss and Dairy Shorthorn genetics also represented. The cows calve between September and December and are housed in sand-bedded cubicles through the winter before going out to grass in April. The farm’s land includes both higher fields around the dairy yard and lower pasture on the Norfolk Broads, grassland that in some cases has not been ploughed for up to thirty years. The mix of high and low fields allows the herd to be grazed strategically depending on weather conditions.

The move to the new creamery has allowed the cheesemaking team, now led day-to-day by Blake Bowden, to expand production while maintaining the established methods for cheeses such as St Jude and St Cera. For St Helena, the transition brought new challenges. Production shifted into a larger 1000-litre jacketed vat, which required careful redevelopment of the recipe to recreate the cheese’s distinctive soft, dense-but-giving texture. More than six months on, the process has been successfully refined and St Helena is once again at its best.

Making St Bede.

Alongside settling into the new dairy, Julie and Blake have begun developing a new cheese: St Bede.

Julie began experimenting with the cheese just before Christmas 2025, working once again with French cheese consultant Ivan Larcher, who has collaborated with her for many years. Their aim is to create an “old-fashioned” Camembert-style cheese with a rind dominated by fluffy filamentous Geotrichum rather than the bright white Penicillium cultures that define most modern Camemberts. Working with French culture supplier Standa, they are trialling strains selected to produce more red-fruited, aromatic notes rather than the mushroom-and-barnyard flavours commonly associated with mainstream examples of the style.

Pouring curds into moulds for St Bede.

St Bede is also made from raw cow’s milk, making it Neal’s Yard Dairy’s only raw-milk cheese of this particular style. At its best this leads to complex and distinctive flavour development, but it also demands extremely careful monitoring of milk quality. Julie’s commitment to working with raw milk, and to building a close partnership with the Burroughs’ farm to ensure consistently excellent milk, lies at the heart of the project.

Although St Jude and St Bede are both soft cow’s milk cheeses with mould rinds, the way they are made is very different. St Jude’s curd is set overnight like a firm yoghurt before being ladled gently into moulds. St Bede follows a faster make, involving cutting and stirring the curd before moulding. The process may be quicker, but it demands absolute precision: the curds must drain and acidify within a narrow window for the cheese to achieve the smooth breakdown and supple, squidgy texture that defines the style. It is this delicate balance that makes Brie and Camembert-type cheeses notoriously difficult to perfect.

St Bede set overnight.

Neal’s Yard Dairy has partnered closely with Julie and Blake during this development process. We receive cheeses from every batch, allowing us to follow the progress week by week and offer feedback as the recipe evolves. The flavour is already showing promise, with a long, complex finish, even as we continue working together to encourage a softer, more yielding texture.

Tasting different batches of St Bede at Neal's Yard Dairy.

We look forward to supporting the continued development of St Bede and, in time, sharing the finished cheese with our customers.