Spoonfed Food and Drink editor Emma McAlpine heads to the 2012 International Cheese Award to eat a lot of cheese in the name of duty.
There are no doubt better ways to prepare for judging the International Cheese Awards than attending a three day music festival beforehand. During the three hour drive to Cheshire from the Secret Garden Party Festival, feeling knackered and considerably dehydrated, it strikes me that the last thing I feel like doing it tasting copious amounts of cheese. Thankfully I have Monday night to recover and get some rest before an early start on Tuesday.
All 156 judges including press members and experts from the dairy industry are due to arrive at the Nantwich showground at 8am and start tasting at 9am. The awards are held in a large marquee containing several ‘cool rooms’ (basically walk in fridges). Dominating the tent are long trestle tables and refrigerated cabinets containing cheese of every colour and variety from enormous blocks of pinky Cheshire to bright orange red Leicesters and wheels of Cheddar in green, red and black wax.
I meet my fellow judges Fred Chesman, a big American cheese importer and Steve Peace, founder of the Carmarthenshire Cheese Company, near the first cool room and we go over our tasting schedule. We have been given four out of 226 categories to judge including: Whole Blue Stilton, Blue Vein Cheese produced outside the UK, Shropshire Blue and Cream Cheese with additives. Not only are we to taste a total of 48 cheeses (no spitting allowed) but a good percentage of the cream cheeses are flavoured with garlic, onion, chilli and chive. This is not going to be the nice gentle assault on the palate I was hoping for. “We’re going to have seriously bad breath after all this,” jokes Steve as I stare longingly at a row of mild Swiss.
Fred stabs each cheese with a cylindrical-shaped cutter and scoops out a sample for each of us to try. Out of the first category of blues, we award a Websters Dairy whole blue Stilton the gold medal, which has a nice crumbly texture and a strong umami flavour. Next up, we try some very mouldy Cabrales and Treviso blues that leave us gasping for water. “It’s that mouldy, you won’t like Cabrales even if it’s good!” remarks Fred (I’m inclined to agree). In the end we give a Picante Gorgonzola the gold for non-UK blue vein cheese, which has a nice creamy flavour and a mushroom-y aftertaste but it’s hard to judge such different cheeses in the same category, which range from blue-veined brie to the overwhelmingly pungent Cabrales.
We like the Cropwell Bishop Shropshire Blue best in our third category, which has a good orange colour and a buttery creaminess to the flavour. I use this opportunity to wow Steve and Fred with my Shropshire Blue fact: it’s not even made in Shropshire! They look suitably unimpressed.
Just as my tastebuds are about to go on strike from all the salty curds and mould, we move on to cream cheese. The relief is short lived, as a nice creamy Philadelphia-type is replaced by something akin to Primula and raw garlic. Then we move on to cream cheese with cranberries and hazlenuts; followed by pesto; pineapple; chutney; chilli and onion; and black pepper. My breath could knock out an army right now. We all agree the less ‘supplement flavours’ the better and the Asda brand Philadelphia wins it.
The judging finishes at around 11:30am and it’s a relief to get out of the cool boxes: the stinky sock aroma is starting to make me feel nauseous. After lunch, the awards are announced with a German Montagnolo Affine, a blue cow’s cheese produced by Kaserei Champignon, beating 3,927 entries to be crowned Supreme Champion. One of the few blues I haven’t tried! Richard Paul, show chairman announces it “a truly exceptional cheese.” I resolve to seek it out later when I’ve emerged from my cheese coma.
www.internationalcheeseawards.co.uk
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