Hard cheese: How Brexit made British cheesemakers miss out at awards

It was Edam shame. Simply unbrielievable. No Gouda at all. The story of Britain at the 2024 World Cheese Awards has launched a host of weak puns and a lot of strong words among the scores of UK cheesemakers who sent their products off to Portugal for judging, only to discover that just a single one had made it through post-Brexit customs checks and picked up an honour.

Here’s what normally happens at these awards, organised by a British company, The Guild Of Fine Foods and held in a different location each year. Some 4,500 cheeses arrive to be judged, from 40-odd countries around the world. A couple of thousand or so are good enough to earn a gong, ranging from bronze to super gold.

The very best go on a shortlist of 14 or 16 for the top honour, and then the World Cheese of The Year is announced. Britain last won this in 2017, with a Cornish Kern from Lynher Dairies in Truro, but is normally well represented on both the shortlist (two in 2023, four in 2022) and the wider awards (104 in 2023, 161 in 2022).

Not this time. Only one British cheese made it to the awards list, a Gruyère from Castelli in Sevenoaks. Around 250 cheeses, from around 60 other producers, did not make it to the judging in Viseu at all, because they got stuck at customs.

John Farrand, the Guild of Fine Food’s co-owner, told the Observer that the disastrous hold-up “would not have been a thing” had the UK not left the European Union. James Grant, an awards judge and co-founder of the Real Cheese Project, called it “really devastating” for those who missed out, telling the paper “if we’d had a winner at these awards, it would have changed lives overnight.”

Though Portuguese customs are being blamed in some accounts, one cheese producer who spoke to the New European told us they were still waiting to find out where their cheese had been rejected – for all they knew, it may still be sitting in Calais.

One of the many bits of paperwork required since Brexit is said to have been the root of the problem; it might have been a single incorrect entry by a single producer that caused an entire pallet to be turned away. This is said to have happened recently to a pallet of British cheese rejected at the Spanish border.

Our contact said that the disgruntled Brits had been told they could resubmit another batch of their cheeses for a special post-awards judging but that this was unlikely to happen any time soon as most were now gearing up for Christmas. The irony of the situation, they said, was that this kind of thing had stopped them from selling cheese in the EU years ago.

“Since Brexit it’s been impossible to export so we just don’t bother,” they said. “Europe isn’t perfect, but we were definitely better off in than out”.