Brefu Bach

Wales is a country famed for its sheep farming, but one that never developed a strong tradition of sheep's milk cheesemaking. One woman who is working hard to change that is Carrie Rimes, originally from Devon but deeply embedded in her north Wales community for more than three decades. A few years ago, after a long career as a grassland scientist, Carrie embarked on a new adventure: turning her lifelong interest in cheesemaking, ignited as a child on her family's farm, into a profession. After gaining experience in several French dairies, she applied her new skills to the challenge of developing a distinctive Welsh sheep's cheese made from raw milk. The result was Brefu Bach – Welsh for 'little bleat'. Produced in a converted Catholic church in Bethesda, on the edge of Snowdonia in north Wales, it is made with the milk of traditional breeds fed on species-rich pastures with the highest welfare conditions, including a small flock of local, grass-fed Lleyn ewes.

Brefu Bach is driven across the border to Chorlton Cheesemongers, our sister company in Manchester, where we collect it fortnightly in our van. When it arrives back with us in London, it is typically dried, turned daily and placed in the environment best suited to the batch until it’s ready to sell.