Hay-on-Wye

Hay-on-Wye is the newest cheese from Neal’s Yard Creamery. A squat, disc-shaped goat’s cheese with an ash rind and a smooth, bright white interior, it is loosely modelled on the French cheese Selles-sur-Cher.

Minimum 65g

Spend over £29.50 to receive free delivery (England, Wales & Central Scotland)

Delivery Information

Standard delivery is free to most postcodes in the UK for orders over £29.50. Click here for a list of postcodes where additional delivery charges apply.

For orders under £29.50, standard delivery is £6.00.

Collection from our London shops is free - choose Shop Collection at checkout.

Choose your preferred delivery date at checkout. As we use third party couriers (typically DPD) we cannot guarantee the arrival day of your order but we will do our best to ensure that it arrives as close as possible to your chosen date. To be sure it arrives in time, we recommend choosing a date a couple of days ahead of when you would like to eat your cheese.

Download Crib Sheet

milk type
Goat

weekly production
100 cheeses

ingredients
MILK, salt, rennet

coagulant
Animal Rennet

milk treatment
Pasteurised

location
Dorstone, Herefordshire

milk source
Bought-in

season
All year

average age
2-3 Weeks

cheesemakers
Charlie Westhead

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With windmills and solar panels generating most of their energy and drain water being purified through a wetland system of willows and reeds, Neal's Yard Creamery, where Hay-on-Wye is made, is a model of sustainability.

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Only a hundred Hay-on-Wye cheese are made each week at Neal's Yard Creamery, the Herefordshire home of seasoned cheesemaker Charlie Westhead, whose cheeses have consistently been among some of our most popular goat's cheeses for decades. This tiny production volume – relative to its bestselling siblings Ragstone and Dorstone – makes the Hay-on-Wye ripe for experimentation, and the lessons learned can then be applied to the other cheeses Charlie makes. Like Dorstone and Ragstone, Hay-on-Wye is made using goat's milk bought in from neighbouring Wychmoor Farm at Titley. However, instead of being pre-drained, the curds are hand-ladled directly into moulds and left to settle slowly. It is this that results in the cheese's fine, smooth texture, while a coating of ash and a sprinkling of geotrichum which develops as the cheese ages give it its characteristically fuzzy, dark-grey, speckled appearance.

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our work with this cheese

The Hay-on-Wye is made at Neal's Yard Creamery by Charlie Westhead – one of Neal's Yard Dairy's earliest employees. Neal's Yard Dairy started life as an actual dairy in Covent Garden, making yoghurts and crème fraiche and a few young cheeses. As we expanded into selling cheeses made elsewhere and it became apparent that the cheesemaking and cheese selling activities made more sense as separate businesses, the Creamery was established and moved to Kent. While the business has been independent from us since 1996, we continue to work closely together and Charlie remains a valued friend and supplier, and we have made a concerted effort to offer support and feedback for his experimentation. The Hay-on-Wye comes to us ready to sell.

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Accompaniments

Mixed Seed Crackers
£2.90

Tracklements Fig Relish
£4.20

FAQs

How much cheese to buy?

As a general rule of thumb, we would recommend roughly between 100 and 150 grams per person for after dinner, and a bit more if cheese is the focus of the meal. If you are buying cheese to serve over a couple of days or as part of a buffet, it is advisable to buy a few larger pieces. This will both look better and keep better than many small bits. To help visualise weights, a good tip is to consider that a regular supermarket pat of butter weighs between 200 and 250 grams. If you are at all unsure please give us a call for some advice.

How should I store my cheese?

The best option is to keep your cheese wrapped in its paper within a box in the fridge. This will prevent the cheese from drying out and absorbing other flavours. Your cheese will arrive wrapped in waxed cheese paper, which achieves the best possible balance between maintaining humidity around the cheese and allowing it to breathe. We are happy to provide some free extra cheese paper, just search for "cheese paper" and add it to your basket. We don't recommend cling film or foil as it can cause the cheese to sweat which will negatively affect the flavour.