Chiswick Cheese Market – People’s Choice champions

The Chiswick Cheese Market team: Abi, Pip, Donna, Lucy, Fran and Lucinda

How our Cheese Baby won the People’s Choice at Affineur of the Year

Guest blog by Chiswick Cheese Market

When we started the Chiswick Cheese Market in 2021, we set out to support cheese makers and cheesemongers. We had no idea what an adventure it would turn out to be.

The market is run by a group of volunteers who donate their time, and the proceeds of the market, to charity. To date we have given £75,000 to support various causes.

Our championing of artisan cheese makers caught the attention of the Academy of Cheese, the UK’s professional accreditation association for cheese knowledge, education and careers.

We have collaborated with the Academy to offer the Chiswick Cheese Market Grant, helping to educate, mentor and promote artisan cheesemaking across the UK. We have given 12 grants so far, with three more to come in 2026.

The Affineur of the Year Awards

One of the most important events in the UK artisan cheesemaking calendar is the Academy of Cheese’s Affineur of the Year Awards. An affineur is a cheese whisperer of sorts: an expert in the art of maturing and ageing cheese, known as affinage. Great affinage takes equal parts alchemy, understanding and collaboration between cheesemaker, cheesemonger and the elements.

It is a highly competitive contest, and we have been proud sponsors of the Hard Cheese category for three years. Entrants push boundaries with their cheeses, exploring new techniques and showcasing their maturing skill.

Several new cheeses have come out of the competition over the years.

How the competition works

There are five categories: Hard Cheese, Soft Cheese, Washed Rind, Crumbly and Blue. Each competitor receives the same cheese, made from the same herd and the same batch of milk on the same day, then has the remaining time to carry out their own ageing and maturing plan.

The judges look for more than good taste: they want to see knowledge and skill in the method chosen to achieve the result.

Our Cheese Baby

For the second year running, Chiswick Cheese Market entered the competition as competitors rather than just sponsors. We chose the Cropwell Bishop Stilton, one of the great British cheeses, to see what we could achieve.

Nearly all cheese is made from the same four ingredients: milk, starter cultures, rennet and salt. How, when and at what temperature they are combined is what defines the cheese. To make Stilton, pasteurised cow’s milk is inoculated with starter cultures, rennet and Penicillium roqueforti at 32C.

The curds are drained of whey, salted, chopped by hand and placed into tall cylindrical hoops. They are drained and compacted by gravity rather than pressed, which gives Stilton its slightly crumbly texture.

The curds need to develop before any oxygen is introduced, since oxygen is what activates the Penicillium roqueforti and produces the blue veining. The sides of the cheese are smoothed by hand to seal it out. The cheeses are kept in a humidity-controlled fridge and turned daily for the first 10 days to keep the moisture even.

Only once the cheese is fully formed is it mechanically rodded to introduce oxygen and create the blue veining, then aged for another 8 to 10 weeks in a temperature and humidity controlled environment to develop the veining and the rind.

We had our Stilton’s ‘Gotcha Day’ when she, and yes, she was a she, was only 10 days old and weighed eight kilos.

The Cropwell Bishop Stilton at 10 days old, and again at 12 weeks

Our market has grown out of a collaboration between Chiswick, its community, our traders and the wider cheese world, and we wanted that to come through in our cheese. So we invited our Cheese Baby down from Nottingham, where she was born, for a pint and a cheeky fag at the George IV on Chiswick High Road.

We turned and washed the eight kilo wheel in local Fuller’s Vintage Ale, 8%, provided by the George IV, for the first 11 days, keeping the humidity high to encourage mould growth.

Stilton is not traditionally a washed rind cheese, but we wanted to see how the ale would affect the flavour. Then we pierced her by hand: painful for us, but necessary for the blue veins.

After four weeks we took her to London Smoke & Cure, one of our traders and master smokers, who smoked her whole for four days. Stilton is usually smoked in smaller pieces after full maturation, not whole, so this was unusual.

She came home to Chiswick afterwards, where a team of six Cheese Mamas kept a watchful eye on the temperature and humidity. It takes a village to raise a cheese.

The awards

The Affineur of the Year Awards took place this year at Christ Church Spitalfields, and are open to the public. Alongside the prizes for best cheese, judged on technical skill, innovation and planned outcome, there is a People’s Choice award for each category, voted for by everyone present: judges, cheesemakers, cheesemongers and the public.

It goes to the cheese people most enjoyed eating.

We were astonished by how much blue veining we had achieved. The ale gave a Marmite-y edge that complemented the blue, the paste was creamy, and the smoking added a bacon-and-Stilton-toastie note.

We won the People’s Choice Award for our Cheese Baby.