It's worth saying that there's always some pride to be taken in others in your field looking on your work and singling it out for acknowledgement and praise. We don't make the cheese for awards, of course, we make our cheese because we all have a deep passion in producing fresh local cheese which we've managed to build a healthy community around over a number of years - but it's undeniably exhilarating to get that small nod from your peers telling you you're definitely on the right track. For those somewhat in the dark this was the Artisan Cheese Awards, an event that includes cheesemakers from all across the UK and faces theirs cheeses up against each other in a number of categories. On the 17th and 18th of July our Chiltern Cloud, which is our Manchego style, competed in the Vegetarian Cheese and New Cheese categories and won awards in both categories, gold for the Vegetarian, silver for the New Cheese. It's needless to say that us here at the company are very happy and proud of this achievement as the competition did include artisan cheesemakers from all across the country and to be given a gold in any category is of course a very great honour for us. What it signifies for us is that we're on the right track and the product we're creating, which already gets great feedback from our customerbase, is equally as popular with critics which is always a massive plus. Despite these achievements we're not planning to just sit on our hands and call it a day on this year, not at all. As we look towards the last third of the year and with Christmas slowly begnning to show its head on the horizon, we're throwing around new thoughts and ideas that might cause some rumblings in the months to come. Keep an eye out, this could be just the beginning!