Bellevue Creamery’s fabulous Arran Blue has been awarded the accolade of ‘Best Scottish Cheese’ at the recent World Cheese Awards.

Now in its 30th year, the World Cheese Awards invites 250 cheese experts to judge the entries on characteristics like texture, rind and most importantly, flavour. This year they had 3001 entries – that’s a LOT of cheese!

This multi-award winning farmhouse cheese is made at Bellevue Creamery, near Blackwaterfoot, Arran using 100% pasteurised cows milk from the island’s dairy herd and a vegetarian rennet. Bellevue was established in the early 90’s and produces 3 core products – Blue, Brie and Camembert. They exercise a system of ‘positive release’ whereby until a lab tested sample of each batch returns free from Salmonella, E-Coli, Listeria and Staphylococcus Aurea the cheese is not released for sale.

Gordon Kinniburgh, Managing Director of Bellevue Creamery and the Island Cheese Company claimed to be ‘chuffed to bits’ with the achievement of his small team at Bellevue. As well as winning Best Scottish Cheese, Arran Blue earned a Gold Award, Arran Brie a Silver and Arran Camembert a Bronze. Pretty impressive stuff!

Cheese-maker, Calum Chaplin expressed his delight that such a small cheese maker had achieved recognition in such a large market and claimed that ‘they couldn’t do it without the support of all those involved in the process – from field to table.’

All of us at Taste of Arran are incredibly proud of this well deserved achievement – well done team Bellevue!