A West Yorkshire based cheesemongers are celebrating after scooping both gold and silver accolades at last week’s annual World Cheese Awards.
Family run Cryer & Stott, from Castleford entered their new Duke of Wellington cheese into both the Best New Blue and Best Blue categories at the prestigious awards which took place in the gourmet mecca of San Sebastian in Spain.
Attracting entrants from across the globe the awards, which are now in their 29th year are organised by the Guild of Fine Food and are the world’s biggest ‘cheese-only’ competition. Attracting some 3,021 cheeses from 31 different countries – including Australia, Mexico and Mozambique, the cheeses are judged by a panel of 266 expert judges who ‘nose’ and taste the entrants before selecting the winners and awarding them either a bronze, silver or gold.
Cryer and Stott’s Duke of Wellington blue cheese was created especially for The British Embassy in Paris to celebrate 200 years of the embassy being in British hands and was tasted by The Queen at the prestigious event earlier this year.
The cheese, which was only recently put into full production, is matured for 15 weeks to create its buttery, long lasting flavour, and clearly impressed the judging panel who awarded it a Gold in the Best New Blue category and a Silver in the Best Blue.
A huge accolade for the small, family run business, Richard Holmes, Cryer & Stott’s Managing Director said: “We’re so thrilled with the results from this year’s World Cheese Awards. Our Duke of Wellington blue cheese was created especially for the Queen and has only recently gone into commercial production so to be awarded two medals from such a prestigious judging panel is fantastic.”