The buttery sheep’s cheese from Queijaria Quinta do Pomar, in the parish of Soalheira, municipality of Fundão, was considered the best in the world at the ‘World Cheese Awards 2024’, among around 4,800 cheeses.

On its page, the organization of the contest, Guild of Fine Food, announces that “a soft, spoonable sheep’s milk cheese, made by a Spanish cheesemaker in Portugal, was chosen as the best cheese on the planet at the ‘World Cheese Awards’. ‘2024’.

After 4,786 cheeses from 47 countries were appreciated, the Buttery sheep cheese from Quinta do Pomar It gathered the highest score from 240 judges from 40 countries, with experts in the field of cheese, such as cheese technologists and testers, as well as retailers and buyers, chefs and journalists.

Creamy, cave-cured or the most “non-edible to the nose.” The cheese Oscars contribute 20 tons to Viseu

“Made with raw sheep’s milk and vegetarian thistle rennet (known as cardo), the winning cheese is usually consumed by cutting off the top and removing its almost liquid paste with a spoon,” the organization notes.

The final of the ‘World Cheese Awards’, which is in its 36th edition, took place for the first time in Portugal, in the city of Viseu.

The director of the Guild of Fine Food, John Farrand, said that “Portuguese cheesemakers have made their country proud.” Quoted on his page, the person in charge added that the “World Champion cheese is typical of the central region of Portugal, extraordinary for being made with thistle instead of conventional rennet.”

The Fundão City Council, in the Castelo Branco district, publicly congratulated Queijaria Quinta do Pomar, “for its extraordinary achievement in the ‘World Cheese Awards 2024’”.

“This distinction is a recognition of the excellence of the endogenous products of the municipality of Fundão,” he concluded.

UK cheeses reportedly stuck in customs and unable to compete

In the midst of almost 5 thousand cheeses, there were those who noticed that, among the contest tables, some copies were missing. The missing cheeses belonged to the United Kingdom, which supposedly saw the specimens it sent to the Viseu competition get trapped in customs. According to the British newspaper The Guardian, 252 cheeses from 67 British manufacturers could have been affected.

“The reasons are not clear to me, on Friday we were still trying to understand what was happening and what was wrong, but we couldn’t,” John Farrand, director of the Guild of Fine Food, told the same newspaper, adding that South African cheeses , Japan and South American countries, which “They are generally much more difficult to import”They were able to compete. “Before Brexit, this would not have been an issue. “That is a fact,” he stated.

Although it is not unusual for some countries to sometimes be unable to include their cheeses in the competition, John Farrand has ensured that each year the Guild of Fine Food receives a special license to import cheeses for the competition and that British cheesemakers met all the conditions..

“It’s devastating. The UK is going through an incredible change when it comes to cheese. There is an incredible amount of hard work on the part of these producers who are putting artisanal cheese back on the map. It’s very, very sad,” lamented James Grant, co-founder of the Real Cheese Project.

“What this really shows is that it is It is very difficult to export cheese after Brexit.. The Guild will have done everything in their power to make this happen, but if someone on the border decides something is wrong or misinterprets a role, everything falls apart,” said Sam Wilkin, producer of the Yarlington and RollRight varieties.