Corra Linn from Errington Cheese was awarded Best Scottish Cheese at the World Cheese Awards. The highly coveted prize was awarded to a hard ewes’ milk cheese. Made with vegetarian rennet and matured for 6-12 months, this cheese wowed the judges at Festhalle, BernExpo in Switzerland during an intense day of judging on Thursday 13 November.
In total, Scotland was awarded 1 Super Gold, 1 Silver and 4 Bronze awards.
Organised by the Guild of Fine Food, the World Cheese Awards is globally recognised as the pre-eminent event in the cheese world. This, the 37th edition, hosted by Switzerland Cheese Marketing, saw 5,244 entrants from 46 countries. Cheeses were judged by a panel of 265 leading cheese experts, including affineurs, graders and producers as well as retailers, journalists, broadcasters, and other experts in the field.
The Es La Leche award is new to the World Cheese Awards 2025 with an aim to celebrate and recognise the part that milk plays in the cheese making process. The care, hard work and science behind milk production as the key ingredient in cheese is overlooked in the trade and virtually unknown by the cheese-loving consumer. The award this year will recognise a person who has contributed to best-practice and knowledge for makers and the allied skills of animal husbandry in pursuit of excellence in milk production to create exceptional cheese.
Es La Leche, literally translated, is ‘It’s the milk’ but in colloquial Spanish it is an exclamation for ‘It’s amazing’.
Each year the panel is hand selected from some of the most accomplished cheese professionals in the world to ensure there is a balance of age, gender, discipline and areas of expertise.
Judging took place in three rounds, over the course of one day. The first round saw judges work in teams of two or three, identifying any cheeses worthy of a Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Super Gold award. Then, in the afternoon the Super Gold cheeses were re-assessed by a Super Jury made up of 14 of the most distinguished cheese experts to find the top 14 cheeses from across the globe. Finally, the top 14 cheeses went head-to-head to determine the World Champion Cheese.
They assess the look, feel, smell and taste of each entry, scoring aspects such as the appearance of the rind and paste, as well as the cheese’s aroma, body, and texture, with the majority of points awarded for flavour and mouthfeel.
To ensure a completely fair competition, the entire judging process is ‘blind’; all packaging and identifying logos and markings are removed, and the judges are given a brief description, but no indication of origin or producer.
All the cheeses were entered through one of 20 consolidated shipping points located around the world to ensure that every competitor was delivered in the best possible condition for judging.
The Guild of Fine Food worked with the Swiss authorities to apply for special licences, allowing the smallest artisan cheesemakers from across the globe to compete with bigger and better-known producers.
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John Farrand, managing director of the Guild of Fine Food, organisers of the World Cheese Awards comments: “And there you have it: the host country scoops the biggest prize in cheese again. Perhaps it is that our judges are immersed in the terroir of the nation, perhaps it is the simple fact that the cheese has less far to travel, but the reality is that this cheese has won through our multi-layered and robust blind-tasting judging process and ended up achieving the highest score, impressing the Super Jury judges from 14 different nations.”
The World Cheese Awards 2025 trophy for Best Scottish Cheese is sponsored by Sartori . The World Champion Cheese 2025 is Gruyère AOP Vorderfultigen Spezial over 18 months from Bergkäserei Vorderfultigen, a hard cows’ milk cheese from Switzerland.
