Northern Irish cheese producer turns blue into gold

Kearney Cheese Company, the Northern Irish artisan blue cheese producer, struck gold at the prestigious British Cheese Festival at Cardiff Castle last Friday. The farmhouse cheese producer won a gold medal for its blue cheese at the prestigious event.

Kearney Cheese, based at Portaferry, County Down, in the foothills of the Mourne Mountains, was formed by blue cheese enthusiast Paul McClean, who turned his back on a successful career as a project manager to convert a lifelong love of blue cheese into an increasingly successful small business that's now supplying delis and hotels in Northern Ireland.

The award for Kearney Blue Cheese, in the New Cheese category, at the British Cheese Festival follows his success in winning a gold award at the International Cheese Festival in Nantwich in 2011. The Irish artisan producer was among 82 of the 905 entries to win a gold medal at Cardiff Castle.

Kearney Blue, a semi-hard cheese with a distinctive rind, an open texture and smooth, creamy flavour, is Northern Ireland's first artisan blue cheese. The awards were announced at the start of British Cheese Week.

"Winning a gold medal at the British Cheese Festival is a tremendous endorsement of the quality of my cheese," says Mr McClean. "I decided to enter the cheese to obtain some more feedback from the expert judging panel in Britain that would help me in the further development of a product that is essentially based on my own tastes and love of blue cheese."

Kearney Blue, he adds, has been created to evoke images of dry stonewalls and stone built windmills in the Ards Peninsula in his home of County Down and reinforcing the provenance of the natural cheese, which uses milk sourced from local farms.

"Overall, our aim is to produce the finest artisan blue cheese from the best Northern Irish milk and promote a quality blue cheese from Northern Ireland. Eventually I want to sell it outside Northern Ireland especially in Britain," adds Mr McClean.

Established in 1994 by food expert and writer Juliet Harbutt, the British Cheese Festival aims to raise the profile of British cheese and create a recognised symbol of excellence for all British cheese.

Harbutt is one of the world's leading authorities on cheese. She is a member of the Guilde des Fromagers, Confrerie de Saint-Uguzon then, in 1992, a Confrerie des Chevaliers du Taste-Fromage de France .

She created the British Cheese Awards in 1994 and the Great British Cheese Festival in 2000. In 2012, 906 cheeses from 182 cheesemakers were judged by 60 judges but only 33 per cent were awarded medals, making it the toughest of all the awards but it means the medals represent a symbol of excellence.