ADVENTURES IN TASTE
From Cairo to Covent Garden
Jason Hinds and the Mission to
Sometimes a life’s work begins with a grand plan. Sometimes though, it begins with a piece of cheese and a sticker.
For Jason Hinds, one of the most influential figures in the revival of British artisan cheese, the journey started with a small round box of processed cheese in 1970s Cairo.
“My cheese journey began, I think, with Laughing Cow.”
Vache qui Rit or Laughing Cow cheese was the spark that would eventually lead Jason to help introduce the world to the richness of British farmhouse cheese through his work with Neal’s Yard Dairy and beyond.
Today, the cheeses he championed — Montgomery’s Cheddar, Keen’s Cheddar, Colston Bassett Stilton and many others — are celebrated globally. But when Jason began his career in the early 1990s, the idea that Britain produced world-class cheese was far from widely accepted.
This is the story of how that changed.
A Childhood Taste That Stuck
Jason grew up between cultures. His early years were spent in Cairo, where his father taught Arabi. In Egypt in the 1970s, Western food was scarce, but one shop sold a prized import: Laughing Cow cheese.
For Jason and his classmates, it wasn’t even the cheese that mattered most.
“We bought the cheese for the stickers… Tintin, Asterix, Lucky Luke. And we put them all over our suitcases.”
Looking back, Jason sees the symbolism.
The suitcase decorated with cheese-box stickers foreshadowed a life spent travelling — and carrying stories of cheese across borders.
When the family returned to Cambridge, the journey continued. As a child, Jason was responsible for buying cheese for the household. That responsibility turned into curiosity.
“At first I worked my way up the grades of cheddar from number one — the mild — up to the strong.”
But curiosity soon led him beyond the supermarket shelf.
Within a few years he was sourcing farmhouse cheeses such as Quicke’s and Keen’s from local delis — long before artisan British cheese was fashionable.
The Realisation That Changed Everything
By the time Jason was at university in Brighton in the late 1980s, he believed he knew a fair amount about cheese. Then a cheesemonger changed everything.
At a small shop in Brighton, he was encouraged to try a raw milk Colston Bassett Stilton.
“I thought I knew more than most people my age about cheese. But what I didn’t know was that the UK had great cheese.”
In 1990, that realisation was startling.
At the time, British consumers largely ignored their own cheese heritage.
“No one bought British cheese in 1990. People bought cheese from France, Switzerland, maybe Italy.”
For Jason, that discovery triggered a decision that would shape his life. He sat down and asked himself a question he would later ask countless young cheesemongers and food professionals: What are you truly passionate about?
After weeks of reflection, the answer came down to four things: football, dance music, travel… and cheese.
Football wasn’t a career option. The club scene was thrilling but not a lifelong path. Cheese and travel, however, could combine into something meaningful. And so the mission formed:
“If no one in the UK really knows about British cheese, then nobody in the rest of the world knows. I’m going to tell them.”
Finding Neal’s Yard Dairy
In 1992, Jason moved to London.
He knocked on the doors of wholesalers hoping to enter the cheese trade — but the industry he encountered was uninspiring.
Warehouses filled with industrial cheese and salesmen in dull suits were hardly the romantic future he imagined.
Then he discovered something different.
Tucked away in Covent Garden was a tiny shop selling carefully selected British farmhouse cheeses. That shop was Neal’s Yard Dairy.
“It was everything I’d hoped to find. The cheese was amazing, the experience was incredible.”
Jason became a regular customer. Every Saturday he would visit, tasting cheeses and spending his modest record-buying budget on wedges of Montgomery’s Cheddar, Stilton and other farmhouse cheeses.
Those cheeses would travel home on the Tube. At his West London flat, they became the centrepiece of gatherings before long nights out as part of the burgeoning rave scene.
“Friends would come around for wine, we’d taste all the cheese together, and then go out raving.”
Eventually Jason realised something obvious: he didn’t need a postgraduate business course.
He needed to work in the shop where he bought that cheese, he needed to work at Neal’s Yard Dairy.
Exporting British Cheese to the World
Jason wrote a letter to Neal’s Yard Dairy explaining his ambition: to learn about British cheese and export it internationally.
Within months he was working there, honing his craft as a Cheesemonger behind the counter, introducing new people to great British cheese. Soon after, Jason took on responsibility for export.
At the time, the company shipped British cheese to the United States just once a month.
The process was painstaking.
Jason wrote “invitations to order” describing each cheese, faxed them to American retailers, gathered orders, packed the cheeses and drove them across England to be loaded onto shipping containers bound for the U.S.
“Education was at the bedrock of what we did.”
In the early 1990s, the American artisan cheese market was still emerging. Many cheesemongers there had limited access to raw milk European cheeses — let alone British farmhouse cheeses.
Jason and his colleagues didn’t just sell cheese they trained cheesemongers how to cut, wrap and explain
it. In doing so, they helped spark a transformation in how British cheese was perceived globally.
The Cheese That Changed New York
Jason’s influence didn’t stop with British cheese. During visits to Paris, a French cheesemonger asked him a question that led to another revelation:
Why didn’t the British eat Comté?
In France, Comté was the “locomotive” of cheese sales — the cornerstone product that drove everything else.
But in the UK it was virtually unknown.
Jason was astonished.
“Why does no one know that Comté is an amazing cheese in the UK?”
The discovery eventually led to the creation of Borough Cheese Company in London and later Essex Street Cheese Company in New York.
The concept was radical in its simplicity.
Sell one cheese — exceptionally well.
At Borough Market, the stall displayed towering stacks of Comté. The team offered samples, explained the cheese, and watched as customers discovered it for the first time.
“Nine people out of ten who tasted it would buy it — even if they’d never heard of it.”
In New York, the Essex Street Cheese Company applied the same philosophy — slowly building a loyal audience for the cheese.
Connecting People Through Cheese
If there is a single theme that runs through Jason’s career, it is connection.
He delights in bringing people together — producers, cheesemongers, travellers and enthusiasts.
“I get a great deal of pleasure out of connecting people and watching the energy that creates.”
That instinct helped shape collaborations across the cheese world, including his involvement with Cheese Journeys.
When founder Anna Juhl first approached Jason about the idea of creating travel experiences centred around artisan cheese, he immediately recognised its potential.
Cheese, after all, is a gateway to something larger.
A landscape.
A farm.
And when people taste exceptional cheese in the place where it is made, the experience becomes unforgettable.
The Moment That Matters
For Jason, the magic of cheese happens in simple moments.
A wedge handed across a counter.
A table shared with friends.
A group of travellers tasting cheese at a farm.
Those moments transform understanding.
“It’s just taking the time to enjoy a moment in life. And if we can help people do that, it makes the world a better place.”
From a childhood snack in Cairo to a global mission to champion great cheese, Jason’s journey reflects the power of curiosity, passion and persistence.
And perhaps the most remarkable part of the story is that it’s still unfolding — one taste, one conversation, one connection at a time.
