Tring Judge at World Cheese Awards

TRING, U.K. - Dec. 1, 2015 - PRLog -- On Thursday 26 November, Toby Murray of Beechwood Fine Foods, the Farm Shop in Tring, Hertfordshire, enjoyed his fifth appearance as a judge at the World Cheese Awards, which took place at the BBC Good Food Show Winter at the NEC, Birmingham.

Alongside team mates, Ruth Holsworth of Paxton and Whitfield and Nick Baines, freelance food and drink journalist, Toby and the team judged over 40 cheeses awarding gold, silver and bronze awards to deserving cheeses. Toby comments, “We had a diverse range including soft and hard goats’ cheese, plenty of blue cheeses including an outstanding blue made with ewe’s milk, as well as some more everyday table cheeses and some flavour-added cheeses that are best forgotten!”

With over 2,700 cheeses to be judged, and one team judging each table consisting of approximately 40 cheeses from all over the world, the 250 experts had their work cut out.  Each team nominates a Super Gold for progression through the various stages of the competition.

For more than 20 years, the World Cheese Awards has been bringing together buyers and sellers from the dairy industry worldwide. It’s the largest cheese competition in the world, regularly attracting over 2,500 entries.  In 2014, 34 countries entered over 2,700 different types of cheeses.  It takes around 250 judges and an entire day to complete.

Toby said, “I had a great team to work with again this year.  We enjoyed debating the relative strengths and weakness of a number of very strong candidates, so much so that for our Super Gold selection we were tied between a wonderful creamy and intense ewe’s milk blue, and an intriguingly different semi-hard goats’ cheese. After much deliberation, and including the intervention of an arbitrator, it was decided to put both cheeses through to the next round of judging! Sometimes you just can’t pick a winner.  However the overall winner in 2015, selected by a panel of cheese gurus was Le Gruyere Premier Cru.”

For further information, visit www.beechwoodfinefoods.com or contact Toby and Sarah Murray on tel: 01442 828812.