Whin Yeats Wensleydale

Tom and Clare Noblet turned to cheesemaking when a steep fall in milk prices in late 2014 made the viability of their beautiful Whin Yeats dairy farm seem increasingly tenuous, despite the time and effort they'd invested over the previous few years in improving the farm. Cheese, they thought, would offer a way of adding value to the exceptional milk of their pedigree Holstein cows, so they signed up for cheesemaking courses and began building themselves a dairy. The farm looks out over the Lake District on one side and the Yorkshire Dales on the other, and Whin Yeats Wensleydale (also known as Fellstone) is their take on a style of cheese deeply rooted in the Dales, partly based on a 1933 Wensleydale recipe from an old Ministry of Agriculture publication shared with them by Andy Swinscoe of Courtyard Dairy.

As a British cheese shop, it feels essential that we have a raw milk farmhouse Wensleydale on our counter. In September 2017, our cheese buyer Bronwen visited Clare to share ideas and watch the traditional Wensleydale recipe in action. Since then, we have continued to support the Noblets as they develop their Wensleydale, and we expect the cheese to evolve significantly over the next few years as they refine their methods. It is fascinating how working with them has helped us to re-examine our preconceptions of what Wensleydale is: where we once expected crumbly texture and bright acidity, we have come to love the pliant texture of Whin Yeats. We continue to visit the Noblets once a month to taste the cheese, offer feedback and select the batches we are interested in maturing and selling.