Sheep milk cheddar named NZ’s top cheese
New Zealand’s top cheeses for 2025 have been announced and family-owned, Oamaru-based Whitestone Cheese is the big winner.
At this year's tasting, judges struggled to set aside Whitestone Oamaru Blue, describing it as "delicious, great blue cheese". "True flavour, well balanced with buttery unctuous texture... we could not stop eating this," they said.
Whitestone Cheese was awarded Dairy Champion in the inaugural 2017 Outstanding NZ Food Producer Awards and has amassed 27 medals during the past seven years.
Whitestone Cheese managing director Simon Berry told Dairy News that it was a fantastic result for all the team involved in achieving this.
"Two titles in seven years cements our position as a quality focused dairy producer," says Berry.
"There's no secret behind our success, just an ongoing focus on quality and remaining true to our handmade craft."
The Whitestone Oamaru Blue was developed after domestic market analysis identifying no high moisture blue cheese with complex flavours blue being produced in NZ, says Berry.
"We combined multiple blue mould strains, including our 45 South Blue that was discovered in a Fairlie hay bale, to develop a new flavour.
"We then utilised a combination of natural maturation techniques to enable blue mould growth in such a high moisture cheese.
"The result is a cheese that can only be produced on a small scale and with peak spring and summer milk only, therefore this is a new seasonal cheese addition to our Black Label cheese range."
Berry says the key to their success is its key raw ingredient - pasture-fed whole milk.
"North Otago's limestone milk is world class and our milk tests have proven it has very high calcium mineral properties, essential in producing full flavoured cheese."
Whitestone Cheese sources milk from local farmers.
"Local farm supply is critical and key to our quality levels; fresh raw milk is delivered to us daily from local farms' morning milking," says Berry.
For the 2023 Outstanding NZ Food Producer Awards, judges tasted and assessed more than 290 locally harvested, grown and made food and drink products. Of the food 206 were recognised with medals of which 98 were gold, 60 were silver and a further 48 were bronze.
