There is no cheese grater than the cloth-bound farmhouse cheddar produced by Tullow's big cheese Tom Burgess, which was declared Gouda-nuff to Brie the best at the Irish Cheese Awards which took place in Co Cork on Wednesday night.
Mr Burgess accepted the Supreme Champion award for his Mount Leinster Cheddar with some relish in Ballymaloe almost 10 years after he got into the business after growing frustrated with the EU's dairy quota system.
Looking to use his degree in agricultural science (as well as the milk from his herd of 130 cows) in a different way, he decided to become a cheese maker. "I loved eating cheese so it seemed like the only route to take," he told The Irish Times the morning after his big win.
“All the cheese is made from my own cows who are milked just once a day during the summer when they are eating only grass,” he said.
During those frantic summer months, he produces around 200kg of cheese a day under the Coolattin Cheddar brand and all with just one single helper.
“The milk goes straight from the cows into the cheese vat at exactly the right temperature,” he said.
All told, he produces around seven tonnes of cheese, which is aged for a year before being sold in local farmers markets and, more recently, in some Tesco outlets. It can also be sourced in specialist cheese sellers including Fallon & Byrne on Dublin's Exchequer St.
“I doubled my production this year and there might be more demand again next year after winning this award,” he said. “I certainly wasn’t expecting to get a prize and when we were driving down I warned my wife not to be miffed when we came home empty handed.”
John and Sally McKennas’ highly-regarded guide describes the cheese as “closest to a territorial cheddar cheese in style” with “some elements of a Comte-style to it”.
According to the McKennas it has a “clean alignment of flavours... thanks to excellent cheese-making using [Burgess's] own summer pasture, morning raw milk from happy cows”.
The guide also highlights the cheese’s “sweet notes at the top, a touch of spice, a long, mellow aftertaste that shows the careful maturation of the cheese”.
At the ceremony, 36 Irish cheesemakers and 145 cheeses from 29 companies from all over Ireland were judged in 12 classes.
A Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to cheese maker Veronica Steele from Milleen's Cheese, for her outstanding contribution to the farmhouse cheese industry.
Veronica and her husband Norman began producing cheese in 1976 in West Cork and she is regarded as one of Ireland’s first farmhouse cheese producers. She was a pioneer in the farmhouse cheese revolution and found herself mentoring and tutoring other aspiring cheese makers.
From all the gold medal winners, Mount Leinster Clothbound by Coolalttin Cheddar also won the best cow’s milk cheese.
Ardsallagh Cranberry by Ardsallagh Goat Products from Cork won best goat’s milk cheese while Macroom Buffalo Mozzarella by Macroom Buffalo Cheese from Cork won the award for best other milk cheese.
