Philip is world cheese champion!

A FORMER Appleton farmer has become the World Cheese Champion.
Philip Stansfield’s Cornish Blue was named as the best cheese variety in the world at the World Cheese Championships in Birmingham – the first British variety in a decade to be named as the world’s best.
The 53-year-old son of Appleton parish councillor Mike Stansfield won the title in competition with 2,600 cheeses from 26 countries.
He said: “I’m stunned and overwhelmed. They say this could double the size of our business so this really is fantastic news.”
Philip moved down to Cornwall some years ago when he found dairy farming in Appleton was becoming unviable.
He created Cornish Blue nine years ago in an attempt to diversify on his dairy farm near Liskeard.
It is a soft blue cheese similar to Italian Cambozola.
He said: “We were struggling to produce milk profitably so I thought this might be a way of ensuring our future.
“Now, we milk 200 cows and are just about to increase that number to 300. Within the first two hours of winning the award and the news going online, we had £1,000 worth of orders come through to our website.”
The World Cheese Awards is the largest cheese competition in the world, judged in the initial stages by 150 expert buyers from every corner of the globe. It takes an entire day to judge and is held in public, with 100,000 consumers also trying the cheeses.
Philip believes the key to his success was a recent change in the rennet he uses, which allows the cheese to mature for longer.
Pictured: Philip Stansfield with his champion cheese …and one of his cows