A Central Victorian cheesemaker is celebrating its wins at the recent International Cheese & Dairy Awards.
The prizes were announced during the event in England last month, with Castlemaine-based company Long Paddock Cheese receiving five accolades.
Those honours include Best Australian Cheese for its Banksia variety, and a Silver for its Alpine Vacherin-style Driftwood cheese.
Director of the business, Gaëtan Chapon says they’re “super proud and super happy” to be recognised on the world stage.
“It’s just a great endorsement to be compared with… our peers and other cheesemakers,” he told our newsroom.
“It’s a great validation to the hard-work [of] the cheesemakers, [and] the people that are maturing the cheese…”
“It feels like we’re doing the right thing, and it’s just so nice to have Australian cheeses than can compete against their European peers.”
Long Paddock Cheese is a “Covid baby” founded in 2021 by Chapon, Ivan Larcher and Alison Lansley.
The latter sadly passed away in March, with Chapon saying they’re “keeping the dream alive” for Lansley through their work.
“After mourning and the shock, we had to really quickly gather ourselves and make sure that as a team we would keep the dream alive,” he explained.
“We owe it to Alison – she would be very proud…”
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