Affineur of the Year

Yesterday I went to the Affineur of the Year awards, an efflorescence of cheese geekery organised by the Academy of Cheese, and held at Christ Church in Spitalfields, an event which might take a bit of explaining…

Affinage is the craft and science of ripening cheese, thus someone who practices it is an affineur. It’s telling that we use the French word, which underlines the relative levels of respect that cheese enjoys in both countries. Happily something that the Academy through its excellent courses and events like this is doing its best to change. At its most basic level this work consists of just not messing a cheese up, by keeping it in the right conditions. Hard and blue cheeses needs are quite simple, mostly just regular turning and rubbing. Soft cheeses take a bit more care and attention to form their rinds, either by patting and rubbing the moulds or washing in brine to develop a bacterial covering. This in itself is satisfying and creative work, but affinage can be a more floridly creative process, turning the original cheese into something quite different.

For the awards, competitors could select one or all of four cheeses covering a range of styles, each with their own challenges: Whitelake Cheese’s Rachel, a semi-hard goat’s cheese, Quicke’s Cheddar, Trethowan’s Gorwydd Caerphilly, Cropwell Bishop Stilton and the Brie-style Baron Bigod. Young cheeses of the same batch were sent out to the competitors to ensure that they were on a level playing field. The judges pick a winning affineur for each cheese, and then one overall winner, who takes home the coveted trophy, a wooden cheese with a cheese iron sticking out at at triumphantly jaunty angle. Those judges were an august panel of international cheese experts, big cheeses if you will, including such luminaries as the eminent French affineur Laurent Mons; Josh Windsor, director of the caves at Murrays, the venerable New York cheese shop; Patricia Michelson founder and owner of La Fromagerie; Perry Wakeman, three-times winner of Affineur of the Year; and cheesemakers Sarah Furno (Cashel Blue) and Tim Jones (Lincolnshire Poacher.)

The cheeses are laid out for judging in the crypt, an appropriately cellary place for an affinage competition, which one would expect to be nice and cool, though once you cram a couple of hundred excitable cheese fanciers in turns out to be quite warm. Tradition dictates that the event opens with the ceremonial Cutting of the Cheese, after which the judges get on with the judging and the rest of us pop back upstairs to drink delicious Blanc de Blanc from Flint Wines, eat loads of cheese and chat with all our cheesy mates, or as us freelance cheesemongers like to say, ‘work.’

Alongside the main event is the People’s Choice awards, voted on by the general public, or as general and public as you get at an event like this. I’m not sure what to make of this, but there was almost no crossover between the cheeses the ‘public’ chose and the picks from the professional judges. Now here are those results:

People’s Choice

Quickes Cheddar: South West Cheese Shop, washed in smoked mead. Washing in booze is a well established method, the smoked element more innovative. The mead added just a gentle hint of smoke to the cheese, which had kept its moist texture and sweet earthy flavour, showing that Rob and his colleagues had honoured the first principle of affinage: ‘don’t ruin the cheese.’

Gorwydd: No. 2 Pound Street, matured in hay, which I think is originally an Italian practice. Sweet with a hint of the farm and old books. ‘Not too wacky,’ is how my friend and colleague Tani from the Guild of Fine Food described it, which is a higher accolade than you might think.

Rachel: Neal’s Yard Dairy, (Islington Branch), washed in brine and rubbed in beetroot powder. Again the First Principle was honoured, and the cheese had the gentle nutty flavour and giving moist texture you would expect of a Rachel, no mean feat for a shop without an actual maturing cellar. The cheese was striking, beautiful and like no other cheese I’ve ever seen, which is saying something.

Cropwell Bishop Stilton: Chiswick Cheese Market, oak smoked and ale washed. When I was a Younger Monger, full of the zeal of the newly converted, I would have deplored this, but that would have been incorrect. The smoke was skilfully subtle, with a yeasty edge to the cheeses’ signature umami note which might have been thanks to the ale.

Baron Bigod: Paxton and Whitfields, rubbed in three types of pepper. Somehow this brought out an umami note which I don’t normally associate with mould-ripened cheese, like a steak with pepper sauce. Skilful affinage left a firm centre whose acidity contrasted nicely with the creamy breakdown.

People’s Choice Overall Winner: South West Cheese Shop. Nice one Rob!

And now for the big ones…

TLDR, The Courtyard Dairy, one of Britain’s most beloved cheese shops, smashed it this year.

Quickes: Courtyard Dairy, Alpine style. Simon and his colleagues took an experimental approach to all their cheeses. Rather than seeking outcomes, they were asking questions, an approach that captures the quintessential spirit of the affineur. For this one it was, ‘how much does affinage affect flavour’, i.e., what happens when you mature a Cheddar like a Comté, and the answer is ‘a lot’. Sweet, with hazelnuts and tropical fruits, just like an adolescent Comté. Nice.

Gorwydd: No. 2 Pound Street, hay aged.

Rachel: No. 2 Pound Street, washed in mead, rubbed in bee pollen. Sweet and earthy with flowers and fresh hay. I liked the mix of innovation and respect for the character of the cheese with this one.

Cropwell Bishop: Courtyard Dairy, cloth bound. This is kind of like an in joke for British cheese people in that most of our traditional cheeses are bound in cloth, except for Stilton. Super, super creamy with bags of spicy umami.

Baron Bigod: Courtyard Dairy, anatto wash. This natural vegetable dye is conventionally used only for colouring, but given that it does have some aroma and is quite alkaline, the team wanted to see what a thorough wash would do to the character of the cheese. It was musky with fungal notes and the paste creamy with a firmer fresh centre. Also they looked beautiful, sorry I was too excited to take a picture…

Annnnd the winner, and this year’s Affineur of the Year is The Courtyard Dairy! Congratulations you lovely mongers you! As their very just rewards, Simon and James are going to spend an all expenses paid week in the cellars of Murray’s in New York City, sponsored by Murray’s themselves.

This year also saw the debut of a new prize, Rising Star, sponsored by the great French fromager-affineur Mons, to celebrate and foster new talent. This year’s thoroughly deserving winner was Claire Burt, maker of the startlingly pretty Burt’s Blue, for her apple and maplewood smoked blue. Congratulations Claire! Claire’s prize is the famously demanding Mons affinage course, at their caves near Roanne on the Loire.

The whole place was absolutely heaving with top quality cheese, as well as its makers, affineurs and mongers, and as such was a palace of joy for me. It was exciting seeing how successful both the traditional and the more experimental approaches to affinage can be, from bee pollen and beetroot powder to minimal intervention in the the perfect conditions for a particular cheese. Also it’s nice to be reminded, as if I needed to be, how lovely cheese people are.

And now for a couple more lovely cheeses:

This week’s recommendations:

Substack: Normal London Bloke - You know how things are a bit shit and terrifying right now? This bloke makes you chuckle about it all. I like him.

Book: Time’s Anvil, Richard Morris. A lovely, lyrical, thought provoking meditation on British history and archaeology, time, human culture and how short the Long Past really is.

Podcast: In Our Time - I was a bit sad to see Melvin go, but Misha Glenny is doing a cracking job.

Huge thanks to everyone at the Academy of Cheese for all that you do in the Great Cause, also Tani Dawn-Hiscox and Katy Fenwick for actually listening to people while I swanned around eating cheese and haplessly burbling.