Yoredale Wensleydale

Ben and Sam Spence started making cheese in 2019 after leaving their jobs in finance and moving from Manchester back to Ben’s family farm in the Yorkshire Dales. Looking for a way to diversify the farm’s output, they settled on cheesemaking and began developing their own interpretation of raw-milk Wensleydale cheese. They are now based in the village of Carperby, where they have restored an old farmstead that had stood derelict for more than a decade. After renovating the buildings and installing their dairy in one of the original stone structures, they discovered that the site has its own dairy history: a woman who lived there as a child in the 1950s recalls Wensleydale cheese and butter being made on the farm. To help refine their approach, Ben and Sam spent time making other territorial cheeses, including Stonebeck Wensleydale and Kirkham’s Lancashire, and learning from producers working within those traditions. In 2022 they were awarded the Dougal Campbell Bursary at the Specialist Cheesemakers Association farm visit, recognising both the progress they had already made and the promise of what Yoredale might become.

We had been tasting samples of Yoredale and feeding back to Ben and Sam for the past few years. After running some maturation trials to better understand the cheese and what we can do to sell it at its best, we were pleased to start selling it across Neal's Yard Dairy in November 2022.