Dorset Blue Vinny wins Gold

Made from an old Dorset recipe, this delightful, slightly crumbly blue cheese has a pleasantly soft taste. Made from semi-skimmed milk, it's also low in fat. 

Dorset Blue Vinny cheese could once be found in nearly every farmhouse in the county. It was an ideal way of using the 'left-over' milk after the cream had been skimmed off for butter-making. As a result, the cheese had a very low fat content and was typically very hard, dry and crumbly, with little or no blue. The blueing in those days was encouraged by a number of methods, for example dragging mouldy horse harnesses through the milk before adding the rennet, storing the cheese on damp hessian bags or even keeping it next to mouldy boots! You may be relieved to know that these methods are no longer in use – instead, the blue is introduced by means of a blue mould solution. Dorset Blue Vinny is made with milk straight from the farm’s own herd of 270 Friesian cows. The cheese can vary according to the time of year, which is a true indication of a handmade product.

The World Cheese Awards is a truly global cheese event, the World Cheese Awards has been bringing together cheesemakers, retailers, buyers, consumers and food commentators worldwide for over three decades. The 2018 edition of the World Cheese Awards was part of a brand new festival, Matnasjonen Norge, in partnership with HANEN, an organisation promoting the best that the Norwegian countryside has to offer. A record-breaking 3,500 cheeses from every corner of the globe lined up in the judging hall at Bergen’s Grieghallen on 2 November 2018 and were judged by an international panel of 230 experts from 29 nations. Watch the finest palates and noses around judge every entry in one day, available now on WCA TV.