Neal's Yard Dairy Puzzle 2025: Eat Them or Lose Them
Our new 1,000-piece Territorial Jigsaw features a farmhouse scene celebrating Cheshire and Lancashire. Just as families gather to savour a cheeseboard, this puzzle encourages a slower pace, where curiosity is rewarded by hidden details hinting at the social fabric that gave rise to Britain’s regional cheeses. The puzzle is accompanied by a short guide highlighting subtle details within the featured scene to enhance its meaning and enjoyment. Whether you’re puzzling in the lull after a festive lunch or digging into a chunk of crumbly Cheshire on a cosy night, it’s a celebration of the history and time-honoured skills at the heart of Britain’s cheese heritage.
Eat Them or Lose Them
Many of the British Style cheeses that we sell are the last of their kind. Once they would have been made to sustain the families and workers of farms across a region but industrial cheesemaking has made their production rarer. We're fortunate that there are still people making these cheeses that reflect our unique climate, agricultural and economic history. In fact, there are even new producers taking up the mantle and reviving near lost recipes. We want to support them and the best way to do so is by eating them! This is what motivated our ‘Eat Them or Lose Them’ (Eat Them Or Lose Them – Neal's Yard Dairy) campaign and the pin badge featuring the campaign logo here is still available in our ‘Territorial Selection with Running Porter’
Texture
British cheeses are often affectionally referred to as “the crumblies.” How do cheese makers achieve that crumbly paste? “The texture of cheese has everything to do with how acid the curd is when the moisture is being removed from it,” says Bronwen Percival, our Technical Director. If the whey drains as the curd is acidifying, or once the curd is tangy and acidic, it will take those minerals with it. The resulting cheese will be brittle like a crumbly Lancashire or Cheshire. The Lancashire in this image has been crumble cut: a technique which we occasionally use to show off the unique texture of this cheese. Instead of using a cheese wire, we gently rock knives through the cheese to prise the wheel apart.
Graham, Ruth & John
This photo shows third-generation cheesemaker Graham Kirkham with his parents John and Ruth. Ruth (otherwise known as Mrs Kirkham) used to make Kirkham’s Lancashire while John managed the cows. They are still around on the farm and we’ve been fortunate enough to benefit from Ruth’s brilliant baking skills when we visit. So many of these British Territorial cheeses that we want to champion are family-made and passed down generationally. Appleby’s Cheshire for example, is made by Paul and Sarah who are the third generation of cheesemakers at Hawkstone Abbey Farm where Cheshire cheese has been made since 1952. Not all British territorials are passed down though and we’re delighted to see new producers taking up the mantle and reviving near lost recipes such as the Yoredale, Stonebeck and Whin Yeats Wensleydale.
Clothbound
Both Kirkham’s Lancashire and Appleby’s Cheshire are bound in cloth. This allows the cheese to breathe as it matures in a natural way. The Lancashires that Ruth Kirkham initially made were waxed as that was considered the modern way to finish the cheese. She was encouraged by Neal’s Yard Dairy founder Randolph Hodgson and other pillars in the cheese community to make cheeses that were buttered in the traditional way. When we say buttered, we literally mean that. The young cheeses are fit snugly into a cloth ‘sleeping bag’ and then rubbed in melted butter. (It’s an intensely satisfying process to do!). The light, fluffy texture of the clothbound, buttered cheeses was totally different from the waxed market norm of the time and the future of the cheese was set.
Selection
Here you’ll see a book of notes from selection trips where our Buying Team have visited farms and tasted through a storeroom of cheese and decided what is the best fit for us to sell. Our Director David Lockwood says ‘every month I travel up north to select cheese. When selecting, I’m thinking about the flavour profiles we want, what we like. This is not the same as saying “it’s the best cheese." It is just what we are looking for. Most of the time the producer knows the cheeses we will want to buy anyway. If this is the case, why do it? To build the relationship. To provide feedback. To get feedback. To learn. To spread information that we’ve learned elsewhere. To remind ourselves that we work with people who are trying really hard to make their cheese better and that it’s our job to help them as best we can. We have selection notes going decades back that serve as records of the cheese as well as social commentary on the microcosm of these farms.
On top of the note book, there’s a cheese iron of Kirkham’s Lancashire. We use these irons to bore into a wheel of cheese to taste what’s going on at the centre. How the cheese comes out on the iron can also be a useful indicator for us. Is it leaving fat on the iron? What does the texture look like? For Graham Kirkham, the best cheeses are those that look like ‘fluffy monsters’ on the iron.
Raw Milk
This milk bottle is from Hawkstone Abbey Farm where Appleby’s Cheshire is made. It is one of a small number of raw milk, clothbound, farmhouse Cheshires being made in England: quite something when you consider that there were once two or three thousand Cheshire producers!
Good cheese needs great milk, method and maturation. With a good milk source you can make great cheese regardless of if it is raw or pasteurised, but territorial cheeses like Appleby’s Cheshire that aren’t big and obvious upfront, benefit particularly from the extra dimension that raw milk brings. These are cheeses that you have to chew to release their delicate, complex flavours and the depth that the high quality, raw milk brings makes the deferred gratification all the more rewarding.