Great British Cheese listing for Northern Ireland's Young Buck

Young Buck Cheese from Northern Ireland is in the running for a major award from the Great British Chefs.

Produced by Mike Thomson at Newtownards in county Down, Young Buck, a raw milk blue cheese has been shortlisted in the Best New Cheese Producer category in the web-based organisation's Great British Cheeses. The shortlist is based on a public vote and decisions by a team of respected judges including restaurateur Brian Turner, Chantelle Nicholson, chief operating director of Marcus Wareing Restaurants, cheese expert Patrick McGuigan and actor food blogger Adam Woodyatt, one of the original stars of BBC TV soap Eastenders.

Great British Chefs is an entrepreneurial business that was founded in 2010 with the ambition of being the go-to website for foodies and the preferred partner of a select group of premium food brands. It works with the finest chefs and food writers to create recipes, guides, features and videos that inspire foodies to cook for themselves and others, eat well and better understand the world of food and drink.

Referring to the founder of Young Buck, the citation says: "Michael Thomson went from cheese enthusiast at Arcadia Deli in Belfast to cheese making student. Upon graduating he gained experience from some of the UK leading artisan cheesemakers. With the desire to produce his own cheese within Northern Ireland Michael turned to crowdfunding platform, seedrs. He is now operating out of Newtownards, buying milk from a single herd and is supplying Northern Ireland with its first raw milk cheese."

For the second year, the awards celebrate the best of British cheese produced and distributed by independent cheesemakers and retailers. It brings together a community of fine food lovers, producers, chefs, restaurants, pubs, bloggers and food writers to nominate and vote for their favourite British cheeses and discover the best cheese shops in the UK.

No other cheese awards give the public such a large voice in recognising and rewarding the wide variety of outstanding British cheese. Rather than relying on tastings with hundreds of people at country shows, the awards bring together hundreds of thousands of people online along with industry experts, food writers and celebrities to give the artisan cheese industry unparalleled prominence.

Some 9,000 people took part in this year's awards, the finals of which will be held on 11th October. Last year over 7,500 people voted for their favourite cheeses, producers and retailers. With four categories - from best artisan cheese producer to best speciality cheese retailer, best hard cheese to best soft cheese - the public are able to decide who's in the running, and be in with the chance of winning a fantastic prize.

Great British Chefs has collected over 4,000 recipes from the most interesting and inspiring chefs and bloggers cooking in Britain and Italy today. The content is "designed to inspire foodies - from cooking with squid ink and learning to spherify to mastering knife skills and barbecuing lamb, we have recipe ideas and how-to-cook articles covered. We also bring you unique experiences, regular competitions, restaurant reviews and the latest in food trends".