Sheffield cheese maker scoops gold prize at prestigious show - just 18 months after launching

Sheffield’s first city-based cheese maker has scooped a gold award at the prestigious Great Yorkshire Show – just 18 months after launching.
Sophie Williamson, of Sheffield Cheesemasters, has won a gold award for her Little Mesters cheese at the Great Yorkshire ShowSophie Williamson, of Sheffield Cheesemasters, has won a gold award for her Little Mesters cheese at the Great Yorkshire Show
Sophie Williamson, of Sheffield Cheesemasters, has won a gold award for her Little Mesters cheese at the Great Yorkshire Show

Sophie Williamson, head cheesemaker at Sheffield Cheesemasters based at Kelham Island, switched careers after taking a course in the craft.

She now sells 400 units a week of her first cheese, Little Mesters, to food-lovers, delis, shops and restaurants across the region.

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And last week she scooped gold in the ‘new cheesemakers’ section of the 161th Great Yorkshire Show, the biggest showcase in England for food, farming and the countryside.

Sophie said: “We're really chuffed.

“It’s such a big event the Great Yorkshire Show, so well supported and there were some amazing cheeses there so to get gold was incredible.

“People can enter from all over the country.”

It’s a time ripe for development at Cheesemasters, which has also just been stocked at Chatsworth Farm Shop, and which makes its cheese from milk produced in Sheffield by Our Cow Molly. A blue cheese is now in development and Sophie is also producing poutine cheese curds so people can make their own version of the Canadian dish poutine – usually chips topped with cheese and gravy – at home.

She added: “We’re selling larger units of Little Mesters now to cut and have on a shop counter. The blue cheese is in development until after summer, that’s the one thing with making cheese, you have to wait for it!”