New cheese from Northern Irish award winner

Award winning Northern Irish cheese maker Mike Thomson of Mike's Fancy Cheeses has released a younger version of his successful raw milk Young Buck blue cheese.

The new cheese, known as Baby Buck, is matured for around a month instead of the four months for Young Buck and is on sale before piercing. Baby Buck has a Cheshire style texture and is described by Thomson as a "creamy cheese without the blue notes" associated with Young Buck, which was Northern Ireland's first raw milk blue cheese. Baby Buck also uses raw milk from a local dairy farm.

The new cheese comes as the small business has expanded its sales outside Northern Ireland to leading fromageries in the key French centres of Paris, Lyon and Bordeaux, business developed during a promotional tour by Thomson to France.

"The new business in France, where they know and love their blue cheeses in particular, is hugely encouraging," Thomson says. The fromageries are reporting quite a bit of interest in Young Buck. I had the opportunity to hold a series of tastings to support them," he adds.

"Baby Buck is also made from raw milk and is a response from chefs interested in exploring different flavours. It's a very creamy and rich cheese for people who want an alternative to a blue cheese," he continues.

Baby Buck is already on sale in delis across Northern Ireland. He also supplies cheese specialists in Britain including Neal's Yard in London.

Cheese lover Mike Thomson, a qualified social worker, formed Mike's Fancy Cheese in 2014 after studying at the School of Artisan Food in Nottinghamshire and subsequently working with leading UK Stichilton cheesemakers such Sparkenhoe Farm. He also gained experience from Neal's Yard Dairy, one of Britain's biggest artisan cheese businesses, which now sells his cheese.

He started his own cheese processing business with cash from crowdfunding initiative Seedrs, an online platform that enables small investors to back start-up businesses with seed capital to get them started.