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At the World Cheese Awards held in Birmingham, England, on Nov. 23, Rogue Creamery’s Flora Nelle received Gold in the best new blue cheese category.

Rogue Creamery is owned by Cary Bryant and David Gremmels and located in Central Point, Ore. The cheese is named after their grandmothers, Florence and Nelle. Flora Nelle is a naturally rinded pasteurized blue set with calf rennet.  Flora Nelle is handmade using milk from Noonan Farms, an organic dairy farm in Klamath Falls, Ore. The five-pound wheels are cave aged and ripens from naturally occurring molds found in the Rogue River Valley.

After more than five years in the making, the artisan cheese was first released in November 2010. “We had to come up with a good production cheese that not only met the flavor and aging goals, but would still be viable labor-wise; it had to be reasonable to make by hand on a commercial scale” says co-owner Cary Bryant. Before winning gold at the World Cheese Awards, Flora Nelle received second place at the 2011 U.S. Championship Cheese Contest.

Rogue Creamery’s Rogue River Blue was crowned best in show earlier this year at the American Cheese Society competition in Montreal, beating out 1,675 other competitors.