Deanna Thomas from Taste Cheshire recently judged at the International Cheese Awards in Nantwich #Blog
Taste Cheshire
4th August 2014
At the end of every July, the pretty South Cheshire town of Nantwich plays host to the UK’s largest agricultural show. Hair-dressed horses, coiffured cattle, and showy sheep all head towards Dorfold Hall Park to try and pick up a rosette or some silverware. As the International Cheese Awards takes place the day before the Nantwich Show, this is also where cheese makers of the world unite.
Now in its 117th year, this prestigious event has become the biggest cheese show in the world. Key cheese and dairy produce buyers from every prominent supermarket and retailer gather at this annual event to meet cheese makers and find out what’s new in milk protein. Day one is judging, press and trade-only day, whilst the second day attracts thousands of cheese loving members of the general public who come to gorge on cheese samples and watch cookery demonstrations by celebrity chefs.
The International Cheese Awards take place inside an enormous marquee which, at 70,000 sq ft, is bigger than a football pitch. This year, a record breaking 4455 cheeses were entered from 26 countries in order to be judged by around 200 industry experts for the honour of winning an award in their class which would allow them to feature a gold, silver or bronze ‘International Cheese Award’ label on future packs. Out of all the entrants, only one gets awarded the ultimate accolade of being crowned Supreme Champion.
So who are these ‘industry experts’ who sacrifice their waistlines and risk a weeks worth of bad dreams? Well this year, one of them turned out to be me.
Judges were divided into clusters of 3; two being industry experts and the other being ‘press judge’, representing the vote of the common man. My fellow judges were Alan Mandle, expert cheese maker from Cumbria’s Appleby Creamy and Kay Barlow, a cheese technician from the Co-operative.
None of the judges know which categories they’ll be judging until the last minute but obviously everyone prays not to be given the ‘novelty cheese’ group where we all have to politely nod over reconstituted sticky toffee and pesto cheeses. All cheeses are presented in plain packaging to ensure a blind tasting and a fairer result. Obviously I was hoping for some dirty blues and maybe something that had spent most of its life maturing in a cave somewhere in Europe but it was not to be.
Our first category was held in an enormous fridge ‘Soft, Semi-soft or Cream Cheese without Additives – other than Blue Veined Cheese – without rind. Open to non UK producers’. Without wishing to be rude, it seems that ‘reading’ or ‘following instructions’ are skills not exercised by cheese makers as we had to disqualify some of the cheeses that clearly contained rind and additives. We were left shivering in the cold, solemnly dipping our spoons into various pots of American style bland white cream cheeses and mascarpone – basically lots of cheeses which could have done with a bloody big carrot cake underneath them. We agreed on the best ones and moved swiftly on to the next section.
Category 2 ‘ Best Organic Cheese – Cheddar. UK producers only. Open to any cheese made from organic milk’was much more interesting. Out came Alan’s grading iron (basically an apple corer for cheese) and he expertly shoved it in, twisted it round and pulled out a tube of cheese for us to sample. Only an amateur would just shove the cheese into their mouth straight away apparently, so I watched Kay and Alan closely, whilst pretending I wasn’t about to do that very thing. The first step is to squash the cheese in between your fingers to test the texture and take the chill off it as cheese should be eaten at body temperature. Good Cheddar shouldn’t crumble but should be slightly sticky and soft.
Each cheese is judged on texture, colour and flavour but there were other characteristics to look out for. Alan explained that some Cheddars looked a bit ‘wet’ on the grading iron. This ‘free moisture’ exposed the fact that some had seen better days and were coming to the end of their optimum eating span. So out of the cheddars we tried, some were too acidic, some were too old, crumbly, sticky or sour. Some had crystals in them, some tasted like an actual farmyard floor and some had a kind of caramelised flavour (caused by a culture called Helvetica apparently if you ever have the need to pull that piece of info out of the bag) so we gave the gold to what turned out to be Taw Valley because it had a great mellow taste and a well balanced character.
My fellow judges were less than enthusiastic about our final category ‘Smoked Flavour Added Cheese – Hard. Open to UK and non UK producers.’ I ended up with a serious case of cheese envy as I watched the other judging teams tucking into some glorious looking weeping soft rind cheeses, crisp white goat’s cheeses rolled in ash and gorgeous looking blues with more veins than an old lady’s calves. Still, only one was a processed sausage shaped cheese and most of them had a reasonably delicate flavour with some coming from good quality smoky paprika. I was happy to hear that we’d awarded the Gold to The Cheshire Cheese Company’s Smokey Redwood which, it turns out has been awarded Gold in the International Cheese Awards 8 times since 2006.
I have now added ‘cheese judge’ to my CV and suspect it’ll be a while until I remove the shiny black enamel judges badge from my favourite coat. I just want to say that if anyone needs me to judge an International Chocolate award, I’m available.