Staff at Isle of Man Creamery were delighted to be presented with the Gold World Cheese Award recently by Minister for the Department of Environment, Food and Agriculture, Hon Richard Ronan MHK.

The awards take place each November and form part of the BBC Good Food Show in Birmingham. This year there were over 2,700 entries and the difficult task of judging the 131 classes fell to a team of 250 expert judges from all over the world.

The Isle of Man Creamery Cracked Peppercorn Mature Cheddar took the gold award in the ‘hard pressed cheddar with savoury additives’ category. The base cheese is 12 month old mature cheddar and the peppercorns are then added to the cheese by hand after maturing.

Mr Ronan presented the award to Chairman, Andrew Sanders, Managing director Findlay Macleod and cheese makers Damien Neeson and Darren Christian.

Managing Director, Findlay Macleod said: ‘We are thrilled to have been presented with the Gold Award at the World Cheese Awards at the end of last year. It really is an amazing achievement and shows the quality of craftsmanship of our team of dedicated cheese makers. Our product quality is extremely important to us and we are continuously working with external auditing bodies to ensure that our production facility is meeting the highest possible standards and we are pleased that this is being recognised in our products.’

Mr Ronan added: ‘The World Cheese Awards are one of the most prestigious in the industry and it is fantastic to see a Manx producer taking a Gold Award. This really demonstrates the quality of food being produced on the Island and how lucky we all are to have access to it on our own doorsteps.’

Photo -  L-R, Damien Neeson, Findlay Macleod, Hon Richard Ronan MHK, Andrew Sanders, Darren Christian.