Our Story
A Family Dairy
The Estate Dairy was founded in 2016 by Shaun and Rebecca Young, a husband-and-wife team who set out to make dairy with care, from farms they know personally, with as few hands as possible between the milk and the finished product.
Ten years on, the business is still exactly what they built. Family-run, and each product we create is deliberate. We work with a small number of partner farms who we know personally. Our base is on the Cholmondeley Estate in Cheshire. The estate has its own long agricultural history, and it suits the kind of dairy we want to make.
We have a considered range, including a slow-cultured butter and a Greek-style yogurt that have won awards across the trade and earned a place in some of Britain’s best kitchens, delis and farm shops.
How we got here
Rebecca’s family were farmers throughout her childhood. Her father farmed on the Cholmondeley Estate, the same one The Estate Dairy now calls home.
Shaun arrived at dairy by a less obvious route. He spent five years in speciality coffee, first as a barista, then as a UK AeroPress Champion, and then running his own coffee cart business. Coffee teaches you to notice texture and balance, to register how one origin tastes different from another grown a valley away. He came to dairy with that palate already trained.
The jump came after a remark from Rebecca’s father, who knew the British dairy industry. Shaun and Rebecca started looking properly at British milk, and the more they learned, the more they wanted to make their own. The Estate Dairy was founded in 2016, and the dairy now stands on the Cholmondeley Estate itself. A return to where the pair grew up.
What we stand for
Certified B Corp
One of only five family-run dairies in the UK to hold the certification.
Bovaer-free milk
We farm traditionally with our partner farms and keep our milk Bovaer-free, for animal welfare and product purity.
First into glass
The first UK dairy to put a large-format dairy product into retail glass, in partnership with M&S.
Supporting our partners
Actively working to support family farms.
How we make it
Everything we produce is made with minimal intervention and minimal ingredients. The yogurt is set slowly with two ingredients, milk and live cultures. The butter is cultured for 42 hours. There are no thickeners or stabilisers, either.
Working this way means slower production. We have built the dairy around that rhythm because slow culture is what gives the butter its depth and the yogurt its set.
When the ingredient list is short, the milk has to carry the whole thing. That is why we work with the farms we do, so we can visit them ourselves, and know what goes into every batch.
The team
The Estate Dairy is run by Shaun and Rebecca as joint directors, with Rebecca’s brother Andrew heading up cultured butter production. Andrew brings eight years of butter-making experience to the dairy, and the family connection is as practical as it sounds. Butter, churned properly, is a slow craft, and it helps to have someone in the room who knew the milk before it was a brand.
Around the three of them is a team of more than eighty. Every product we ship is accredited to either BRC or SALSA standard. Those are the certifications that are important to us, to show our commitment to quality.
