Wensleydale Creamery Crowned Supreme Champion at British Cheese Awards

The Wensleydale Creamery is celebrating further success after walking away with the ‘Supreme Champion’ Award for its Wensleydale Blue cheese at the 19^th British Cheese Awards, held at City Hall in Cardiff.

The annual event saw the best cheesemakers from across the nation gather on the eve of the Great British Cheese Festival to celebrate the Oscars of the dairy world and signal the start of British Cheese Week (22- 30 Sept).

The judges nosed and nibbled over 900 cheeses to narrow the field to a list of winners in 22 categories, who represented the nation’s finest possible cheeseboard. Wensleydale Blue, part of the Wensleydale Creamery’s new Premium Range, was crowned ‘Best Blue Cheese’ before being announced as the cream of the cheeseboard crop, taking the highly contested ‘Supreme Award’ for the best cheese at the awards.

Based at Hawes in the heart of the Dales, the Wensleydale Creamery has handcrafts its cheese to time-honoured recipes, using milk from local family farms to ensure the quality and authenticity of its cheese.

The award winning Wensleydale Blue is a delicately flavoured, creamy blue cheese.  Handcrafted and wrapped in a bandage, pierced with small holes, the cheese has a texture that becomes almost velvety in the mouth.  The mellow flavour of Wensleydale Blue, which is not strong or harsh, appeals to newcomers to blue cheese & connoisseurs alike.

David Hartley, managing director of The Wensleydale Creamery, said: “It’s an honour for our skilled team of master cheesemakers to win such a prestigious award and is evidence of the high standard of cheese we produce at the Creamery.

“Thanks must also go to our family of Dales farmers who supply us with milk to craft our award winning cheeses. It is the milk drawn from the cows that graze in the limestone meadows of the Dales, together with our own starter cultures which give our cheeses their unique taste.

Wensleydale Blue is part of the Creamery’s recently launched Premium Range. Ideal for the cheeseboard, the range also includes Kit Calvert ‘Old-Fashioned’ Wensleydale, Sheep’s Milk Wensleydale and Fountain’s Gold Cheddar. These are four of many new planned products, aimed to further establish the Wensleydale Creamery’s expert cheese making credentials in the dairy sector.