CONNOISSEUR:I AM STANDING in a large tent on the farm belonging to Blur bass guitarist Alex James, who has swapped, sort of, his drum sticks for a cheese iron, writes Hugo Arnold
All around me there are literally hundreds of cheeses that over the past few days have been delivered to the not-so-sleepy Oxfordshire village of Kingham for the British Cheese Awards.
The title is applied loosely, for in reality they cover Ireland too, and we tend to do rather well. This is a mammoth competition, involving 900 cheeses in total. Past award winners have included the likes of Ardrahan, Coolea and Milleens. As competitions go, it is as educational as it is enjoyable as the judging is done in pairs; one technical judge and one gastronaut.
Cheeses are divided into categories, and with some trepidation I head for the table offering block and traditional Leicester, to join my fellow judge, John Pearson, who has just retired from working with cheese with Marks & Spencer.
We taste some pretty odd cheeses. The notes range from "integrated, complex and long", to "odd, acidic and dull". Then, occasionally, you come across something really exciting: "farmyard notes giving way to complex fruit and nuts with a finish that seems to go on and on". Our last cheese in this group scores a gold medal.
We Irish have something of a reputation at these awards - the cheesemakers as much as the cheeses. As organiser Juliet Harbutt says: "The Irish contingent add an extra dimension and character which is so totally different to what we see from the cheesemakers here. It only serves to reinforce the rich diversity of cheesemaking today in these islands." This, as one judge pointed out, is in direct contrast to cheese-making countries such as France and Switzerland where remarkably little innovation seems to take place.
This year there were 74 Irish entries, of which seven won bronze, seven got silver and four won golds. The winners will not be revealed until the awards ceremony in Cardiff next month, at the Great British Cheese Festival (September 27th-28th).
Highlights of the competition this year included a particularly strong blue cheese section, where both the number and standard of entries had increased considerably, and the semi-soft category which has grown from almost nothing five years ago to 40 entries this year.
The short boat ride to Wales for the festival might well be a good opportunity to see the overall standard, as well as where the areas of growth and development are. Further information is available from CaIS (see below).
Dublin plays host to the World Cheese Awards in September, an event which will bring 2,000 cheeses from all over the globe under one roof. This will provide a chance to see how innovative other countries are. Noteworthy examples are the US and New Zealand, where cheesemaking has moved into something of a supercharged phase. Proof, if needed, of just how dynamic this whole arena is.
British Cheese Awards, September 27th-28th, www.thecheeseweb.com; World Cheese Awards, September 29th-October 1st, www.finefoodworld.co.uk; Irish Farmhouse Cheesemakers' Association (CaIS), www.irishcheese.ie