At the World Cheese Awards on Nov. 23 in Birmingham, England, Grafton Village Cheese,Grafton, Vt., received five awards, including one gold and four bronze medals, all from its new Grafton Cave Aged line.
Grafton Village Cheese’s Vermont Clothbound Cheddar earned a gold medal in the medium traditional cheddar category, and its Barndance and Shepsog cheeses received bronze awards in the category for cheese made from the milk of more than one animal.
Grafton’s Truffled Bismark earned bronze in the ewes’ milk cheese with added flavors category and its Red Vask earned bronze in the category for new cheese. Two hundred sixteen international cheese judges evaluated 2,700 different cheeses from around the globe.
“Grafton’s cave-aging facility and accessibility to local, premium raw milk has allowed me to create some really unique mixed-milk varieties,” says Dane Huebner, master cheesemaker at Grafton Village Cheese. “I’m extremely excited about the recognition our newest cheeses are receiving, especially on an international level.”
The gold medal-winning Vermont Clothbound Cheddar is one of the creamery’s newer varieties from the Cave Aged specialty line. This classic clothbound cheddar is wrapped in cheesecloth to retain natural moisture while it slowly ages in Grafton’s aging caves. The Cave Aged Clothbound delivers a very bold cheese flavor with both nut and mushroom notes.
Also from the Cave Aged line, the bronze-winning Barndance is a semi-hard sheep’s milk cheese that is accented with cow’s milk, and the Truffled Bismark is a sheep’s milk cheese made with white and black truffles along with truffle-infused oil that provides a bold, rich taste that gets better with age. These Cave Aged cheeses, along with three other varieties, will be available in small quantities exclusively in specialty cheese shops and online at www.graftonvillagecheese.com starting in 2012.
The Shepsog and Red Vask cheeses are both new, original creations that have just been released. The Shepsog is a mixed milk cheese that is made with sheep and cow’s milk and aged for a minimum of five months in the caves. This cheese features complex, earthy flavors and is initially covered in a white mold and then allowed to mature with other molds. The Red Vask is a 100 percent sheep’s milk cheese with a bright-red rind and white paste. It is a semi-soft washed rind cheese and is aged for a minimum of two months to develop a mellow, smooth and meaty flavor.
