Articles written by
Andy Swinscoe worked in fine-dining at The Balmoral, Edinburgh, before falling into the cheese world with Britain's oldest cheesemonger – Paxton & Whitfield. Awarded a Queen Elizabeth Scholarship in cheese maturing he left the UK to carry out an apprenticeship in France with Hervé Mons. On completion of this apprenticeship, Andy returned to the UK and turned to Somerset, Cheddar country. Here he worked for the Bath Fine Cheese Company as Quality Manager to improve their range of artisan cheeses. In late 2012 he started out on his own with his cheese shop and refiners in North Yorkshire–The Courtyard Dairy. You can read more on his blog. (https://www.thecourtyarddairy.co.uk/blog/)
The Beautiful Season of Vacherin Mont d’Or
Cheesemonger Andy Swinscoe explains the history of Vacherin Mont d’Or and why this seasonal cheese is found only in the autumn and winter months
Running a Cheese-Shop … For Dummies
This guest blog series is by Andy Swinscoe, who recently opened The Courtyard Dairy in North Yorkshire, England. The first few weeks. First of all, I needed customers. I’m still working on that one. We all have friends and family, but after I’d persuaded all of those nice people to buy, I still needed an […]
Opening a Cheese-Shop … For Dummies Part III
This guest blog series is by Andy Swinscoe, who recently opened The Courtyard Dairy in North Yorkshire, England. Part Three – chilling it down. Refrigeration. You probably know this, but chilling any space generally sucks moisture out of the air. That would not only affect the quality of my cheese but would mean the cheese loses […]
Opening a Cheese-Shop … For Dummies Part II
This guest blog series is by Andy Swinscoe, who recently opened The Courtyard Dairy in North Yorkshire, England. Part Two – getting it open. I quickly realized that what I thought was hard – finding the location – was in fact the easy bit. It was now November and I had my work cut out: I had […]
Opening a Cheese-Shop … For Dummies
This guest blog series is by Andy Swinscoe, who recently opened The Courtyard Dairy in North Yorkshire, England. Part One – choosing the right place I wanted a cheese shop. Somewhere where I could sell the best cheese and mature/refine it as well. But I couldn’t find where to locate it. To return to the […]
