Chris George

Background

About Chris George

Chris began working for the London-based cheesemonger, Neal's Yard Dairy (NYD), in 1995. He started as a part-time Christmas staff member to subsidise his university studies and continued to work part-time until the Summer of 1996 when he took up a full time role. Chris's duties expanded to include cheese maturation, wholesale, export and, from 2004, he established NYD's tastings and education programme. His work included not only public events but weekly training sessions for groups and individuals from various parts of the food industry, this included giving tours of NYD's maturing rooms, originally located in their Borough Market shop, now in a series of modified railway arches in Bermondsey, South East London. His teaching has involved working with a wide variety of institutions including The School of Artisan Food in Nottinghamshire, Rick Stein's Cookery School in Cornwall, The San Francisco Cheese School in California, Murray's Cheese Shop in Manhattan and The Bedford Cheese Shop in Brooklyn, New York. In addition Chris has worked in TV and radio, organised and given talks at many major food festivals, and judged at the British Cheese Awards, World Cheese Awards, The Great Yorkshire Show, The Nantwich Show, The World Cheese Contest and was part of the two man Great Britain team at the inaugural Caseus Awards in Lyon, 2005. He has regularly visited producers throughout the UK, Europe and further afield. He is also a contributing writer to The Oxford Companion to Cheese. Chris stopped working for NYD full-time in March 2011, and then spent 5 years living and working in New York in the craft beer industry (Beer Table, Mekelburg's) and helped establish the specialist travel company Cheese Journeys and also established and ran Brooklyn's Smallest Cheese School On his return to the UK Chris joined forces with Mons Cheesemongers, the British arm of Mons Fromager-Affineur, in various roles including wholesale, retail, tastings and site management.