Six And Counting For Bothwell Cheese

Another year, another award for Bothwell Cheese. President and Chief Executive Officer Ivan Balenovic is thrilled by the hardware they walked away with at the 84th annual British Empire Cheese Show in Belleville, Ontario.

"We couldn't be more excited," says Balenovic. "We've won the British Empire cheese competition for our Marble category this year. But what makes this really remarkable is that we've won this six years in a row." He notes there doesn't seem to be a lot of history kept of past winners and so Balenovic isn't sure if their streak is any sort of record.

Bothwell Cheese also won first place for its Monterey Jack. "Monterey Jack is really important to us because it forms the base for many of our flavour cheeses, whether it's a Jalapeno Pepper or Red Hot Chili Pepper or even our Truffle Cheese, it forms the base," says Balenovic. Bothwell Cheese also won first place in this category in 2009 and second place in 2010.

Bothwell Cheese entered in a few other categories but fell short. That's "real disappointing to us," admits Balenovic. "We're going to keep working on that and try to win some awards in some other categories as well in the future."

Balenovic says Belleville, Ontario is like the cheese mecca of Canada. "This is actually an international event that is judged by other cheesemakers. So it's really judged by the best of the best cheesemakers and they judge it based on really strict criteria that includes things like closeness and texture and colour and taste. Taste might only be forty per cent of that." Balenovic says every cheese starts with a perfect score and then receives deductions based on defects. Balenovic guesses there were between 15 and 20 cheesemakers present at the competition and hundreds of entries in the roughly 35 categories.

When asked what sets Bothwell Cheese apart year after year, Balenovic suggested it's the process they use to make cheese. He notes they've become fairly automated over the years but not to the degree of some of the larger cheesemakers. "So they're probably not able to nail it quite as closely as we can, as consistently as we can. Another part of it is that we always make cheese with one hundred per cent pure milk."

Balenovic says what Bothwell Cheese has accomplished over the last six years has garnered the respect of cheesemakers across Canada. "We're playing with the big boys," he says. "You win once or twice and they go it's a fluke and anybody can win in a category once or twice but you win six times in a row and there's just no chance that's a fluke. I think that tells us that certainly in the Marble category we've got to make the best cheese out there."