The Lonergan family has been farming the land around Ballyneety, in Knockanore, for over 60 years. We our third generation farmers and over that period we have developed a premium raw milk mature cheddar range, Knockanore Farmhouse Cheese.

Knockanore is one of the very few cheeses left in Ireland which can truly be labelled a farmhouse cheese in the true sense of the term, in that it is produced on the farm and using only milk from our own top quality pedigree Friesian herd who graze in the green pastures of the Knockanore Valley.

Just as with the farm, where we pride ourselves on the quality of our pastures and our dairy herd, quality is the keynote in the cheesemaking facility.

The cheese is carefully made from rich, full cream, raw cow’s milk, using traditional cheddaring techniques. This results in a firm but slightly open textured hard cheese with a unique and subtle flavour. The cheese is available in mature red and white, both aged for a minimum of 6 months, the most iconic cheese in the range is perhaps the smoked version – naturally smoked in our custom built smokehouse using only sustainably sourced oakwood chips.

Knockanore Cheese is a hard-pressed mature farmhouse cheese made in the cheddar style using raw milk. It has a subtle flavour and rich creamy texture; the raw milk contributes a subtle layer of complexity as well as being so beneficial to gut health. They create red and white cheddars as well as the famous award-winning Oakwood smoked cheddar, smoked in their own purpose-built smoker using specially sourced oakwood chips.

Our smoked cheddar is aged as white cheddar for roughly 4-6 months before it is selected for smoking, we select only our best cheddar for smoking to allow the natural flavour from our raw milk maturing process balance with the gentle subtle smokey tones from our natural oakwood chips.

Our smoked cheddar is one of the very few farmhouse smoked cheddars made in Ireland and has won numerous awards – most recently at the 2023 Blas nah Eireann & National Dairy Awards. 

Sustainability is a key part of our business and as an Origin Green company we are committed to our sustainable practices at a minimum. We are currently undergoing a carbon footprint project which will allow us to generate nearly 40% of our energy requirements ourselves as well as other improvements in packaging and logistics. Like everyone nowadays, we are continuing our sustainability journey and want to continue to make improvements along this journey.