The ‘mould ripened soft cows milk cheese’ as it’s officially known, has previously won many other prestigious national awards, but none so fiercely contested as the World Cheese Awards 2007. And it is appropriate that a world award should be won by such an international team. The Irish family business has been in existence since 1983 but it also credits team members from further afield – Alain Girod, the Frenchman who has been with the business since day one; Algy Thwaites, originally from England but has been in Ireland for the past 10 years; and Janusz Bien from Poland who has injected fresh enthusiasm since arriving two years ago. Patrick Berridge commented that the whole team was ‘delighted to have been awarded the international accolade’.

The Berridge family, based just outside the pretty Irish village of Adamstown, were the first to introduce Irish Camembert 24 years ago. Successful entrepreneurs Patrick and Julie Berridge were dairy farming when they saw an opening in the Irish market for French-style soft cheeses. Since then, they have gone on to win an impressive array of awards over the years.

In this day and age it is increasingly important to get the production right for the environment. With this in mind the family is keen to point out how Eco-nomic their cheese production is. They produce their own electricity by pumping anything left over after making the cheese into an anaerobic digester which breaks the waste down and produces bio-gas. This bio-gas is used to run a generator which produces the electricity for the farm. It's only one of 4 such systems in Ireland at the moment.