I’ve just come back from an amazingly couple of days at the World Cheese Awards. Regular readers of my newsletter will know that they were being hosted in Viseu, Portugal. I have to say that I didn’t get to do a lot of sightseeing despite going running everyday (it was very dark when I was out and about at 5.30 in the morning!) The Cathedral was on our route between the hotel and the judging venue – it stands above the city on a rocky hilltop and at night on our way back to the hotel it was lit up and looked stunning (apologies for the picture but it was taken through the window of our coach)

But enough about the backdrop, let’s get down to the reason behind my trip – the cheese! The awards are organised by the Guild of Fine Food, who do a truly amazing job! This year was a record breaking year for the Awards with 4786 entries from 47 different countries. I judged with Nick Tsioros from Olympic Cheese in Toronto and we had a great time tasting each of the cheeses on our table (45 or so different types…) Each cheese is awarded points out of a possible 35 with any cheese scoring 23 points being awarded a bronze medal, 27 points and that increases to a silver with any cheese achieving 31 points gaining a gold. We had a lot of good cheeses on our table and so awarded bronze medals to 8 cheeses and silvers to 6 but there was just one outstanding cheese which we gave a gold to. Each set of judges then has to award one super gold to a cheese on their table so our gold medal cheese was elevated to a super gold. Our top cheese was a semi-cured mixed goats’ and sheep milk from Spain. It had a perfectly balanced, slightly acidic flavour with lots of hazelnut tones coming through on the palate. We both agreed that it was by far the best cheese on our table.

We then had a bit of a break whilst the finals of the Young Cheesemonger of the Year Competition took place. Organised by the Academy of Cheese, this competition is open to any cheesemonger under the age of 30, worldwide! I had travelled over to Portugal with Jack, one of our cheesemongers, who had made it through to the final 6. There were 3 other British cheesemongers in the final as well as 2 from Australia. The finalists had to talk the judges through their cheeseboard of choice before pairing a cheese, cracker and an accompaniment. Jack had taken some gorgeous Negroni Orange Marmalade along to pair with a rye & charcoal cracker and our local goats’ cheese, the Sinodun Hill. The competition then moved on to a blind tasting of 4 cheeses before a cutting & wrapping round where the mongers had to cut 4 pieces of cheese as exactly as possible without having any weighing scales. The final then ended with a ‘master rind’ round where they all had to answer 10 random questions on cheese. At the end of a tense 90 minutes there were only 6 points separating the top 4 finalists. Whilst Jack didn’t win, he did brilliantly and I am super proud of him.

Back to the World Cheese Awards and the next stage is that the super gold cheeses (all 104 of them) then go on to be judged by 14 judges who make up the super jury. These judges each represent a different country and there’s a mixture of cheesemongers, importers, wholesalers and food writers so they all bring something different to the table. They then have to select one cheese each to be judged live in the Grand Final. This is always fascinating as each cheese is shown and described to the audience whilst the judges taste it and then they score it out of 7. It was a very tight final with only a couple of points splitting the top cheeses but the overall winner was a soft, locally produced Portuguese cheese called Queijo de Ovelha Amanteigado. This is a raw sheep’ milk cheese made with a thistle rennet. You eat it by slicing its top off and scooping out it’s delectable, yogurty interior. As you can imagine the crowd were incredibly excited when the winner was announced! I got to try the winning cheese and it was gorgeously oozy, buttery, creamy with a slight bitterness from the thistle rennet. A truly perfect example of this style of cheese!

One thing that surprised all of the judges was the lack of British cheeses on show. It slowly came to light during the evening reception that all of the cheeses from the UK had been stopped at customs and none of them had made it to the awards. No-one seemed to have any idea what the issue had been but sadly over 250 cheeses couldn’t take part in the competition. Hopefully when the Awards head to Switzerland next year there won’t be the same issues!