There are not many cheeses in the world that can claim to be genuinely singular. Most fit into a tradition, a family of similar cheeses made across a region or a country, varying in detail but recognisable as part of a wider category. Young Buck is different. It is the only raw milk blue cheese made in Northern Ireland, and it has been for over a decade. That fact alone makes it worth understanding. The cheese itself makes it worth seeking out.
Who Makes Young Buck and Where
Young Buck is made by Mike Thomson at his creamery in Ballymena, County Antrim. Thomson learned his craft working with and around the traditions of English blue cheese making before applying that knowledge to Northern Irish milk and arriving at something that is unmistakably its own thing. The cheese is made under the name Mike’s Fancy Cheese, which Thomson founded with a deliberate rejection of the kind of earnest artisan branding that can feel self-congratulatory. The story of the producer and the creamery is told through the Meet the Maker section of the Indie Füde site.
The creamery operates on a small scale by design. Young Buck is produced in limited quantities from raw milk sourced from a single local herd. Small-batch production is not a marketing choice here; it reflects the practical reality of making a cheese this way. Raw milk blue cheese requires time, attention, and a consistent relationship between the cheesemaker and the milk. Scaling up would change the cheese. Thomson has chosen not to do that.
What Raw Milk Actually Means
The term raw milk appears frequently in artisan cheese descriptions and is often misunderstood or glossed over. In the context of Young Buck, it matters considerably.
Raw milk cheese is made from milk that has not been pasteurised. Pasteurisation, the process of heating milk to kill potentially harmful bacteria, also kills or suppresses many of the naturally occurring microorganisms that contribute to flavour and complexity in cheese. Raw milk retains those microorganisms, which means the cheese made from it has a richer, more layered flavour profile than an equivalent pasteurised version would produce.
It also means that the character of the cheese reflects the character of the milk, which reflects the diet and condition of the herd producing it, which reflects the land and season. This chain of influence is what cheese people mean when they talk about terroir, the same concept applied to wine but no less real in dairy. A raw milk cheese from a grass-fed herd in County Antrim in summer will taste different from the same cheese made in winter. That variation is a feature, not a flaw.
Raw milk cheese production in the United Kingdom and Ireland is permitted but regulated. Cheesemakers working with raw milk operate under stricter hygiene controls than those using pasteurised milk, and Young Buck is produced in full compliance with those requirements. The cheese is safe to eat. The rawness is about flavour, not recklessness.
What Young Buck Tastes Like
Young Buck is a Stilton-style blue cheese in its broad category, meaning it shares the method of making that defines the English blue tradition: crumbly, open-textured paste with blue veins running through it, a natural rind that develops during ageing, and a flavour built around the combination of fat, salt, and the complex compounds produced by the blue mould.
But calling Young Buck a Stilton-style cheese in the way you might call something a Champagne-style sparkling wine risks underselling it. The raw milk gives Young Buck a depth and persistence of flavour that most pasteurised blues cannot match. The initial impression is savoury and bold, with the unmistakable character of a good blue. Then it develops. There is earthiness, some nuttiness, a slight sweetness in the fat that plays against the salt. The finish lingers in a way that makes you reach for the next bite before you have quite finished processing the first.
The texture is crumbly but not dry, and the blue veining is pronounced without being aggressive. This is a cheese that rewards attention but does not demand expertise. People who claim not to like blue cheese regularly encounter Young Buck and revise that position. The rawness rounds off some of the sharper edges that make some blues divisive while adding complexity that makes it interesting to people who already love the category.
How Young Buck Differs from Stilton
The comparison with Stilton is inevitable and worth addressing directly, because it is both accurate and incomplete.
Young Buck shares Stilton’s broad method: the milk is curdled, the curds are cut, drained, and crumbled into moulds, and the resulting cheese is pierced with needles during ageing to allow air in and encourage the blue mould to develop. The physical form is similar. The flavour category is recognisable to anyone who knows Stilton.
The differences lie in the milk, the scale, and the place. Stilton is made from pasteurised milk and produced by a small number of licensed dairies in Derbyshire, Leicestershire, and Nottinghamshire. Young Buck is made from raw milk in a single creamery in County Antrim. The raw milk produces a more complex, less predictable flavour profile. The small scale means each batch has a direct relationship with the cheesemaker in a way that a dairy producing hundreds of wheels a week cannot replicate.
Young Buck has won awards in international cheese competitions where Stilton is also present, which suggests that the comparison is not unfavourable. But the more interesting point is that the two cheeses are best understood as expressions of the same tradition applied to very different contexts, producing genuinely different results.
Pairing Young Buck
On the cheeseboard, Young Buck is most at home alongside accompaniments that provide contrast. A fig preserve or a good spiced chutney from the chutneys and jars range brings out the savouriness of the blue by setting sweetness against it. Ditty’s oatcakes, made in County Londonderry and available through the crackers and biscuits range, are the natural cracker pairing. Their nutty, slightly smoky character has a direct affinity with the depth of a raw milk blue. The combination of Young Buck, Ditty’s oatcakes, and a spoonful of fig jam is one of the more complete bites in Irish artisan food.
For wine, the classic pairing is a Tawny Port or another fortified wine with sweetness and depth. A 10-year Tawny is the reliable choice. For those who prefer still wine, a structured red with some age on it, a good Barolo or a Rioja Reserva, holds up against the boldness of the cheese in a way that lighter wines cannot.
Young Buck also works well with craft beer. A robust stout, particularly one with some roasted or coffee notes, has a natural affinity with the umami depth in the cheese. The bitterness in the beer cuts through the fat while the darker malt notes complement the earthiness. For those who want to explore pairing Irish artisan cheese with food and drink more formally, the Indie Füde tasting experiences in Belfast offer guided pairings led by people with direct knowledge of the producers.
Where to Buy Young Buck
Young Buck is available through the Irish blue cheese range at Indie Füde, which stocks the cheese directly and ships it across Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Great Britain. Indie Füde has a direct relationship with the producer, which means the cheese is sourced and handled correctly from creamery to customer. Cold chain integrity matters for a raw milk cheese; it should arrive as it left, not as something that has spent time at an uncertain temperature.
For those wanting to explore the broader range of Irish artisan blues alongside Young Buck, the full Irish cheese shop also stocks Cashel Blue from Tipperary, offering a point of comparison between a raw milk blue from Northern Ireland and one of the most established names in Irish artisan cheese. The two sit at different points on the intensity spectrum and together make a strong argument for the diversity of Irish blue cheese.
Young Buck is not widely available outside specialist retailers. It is produced in small batches, it sells steadily, and it does not sit on shelves in supermarkets. Finding it through Indie Füde is the most reliable way to ensure you are getting it in good condition, at the right stage of maturity, from someone who can tell you what arrived that week and how to serve it. Young Buck also features regularly in the Indie Füde Cheese Clüb subscription, making it one of the cheeses that Clüb subscribers most frequently encounter for the first time.