Velvet Cloud wins Best New Cheese at the Irish Farmhouse Cheese Awards

GS1 Member Velvet Cloud's Cloonbook Cheese has won The Best New Irish Farmhouse Cheese at the recent Irish Farmhouse Cheese awards. Launched in 2022 the cheese is a semi hard cheese made using fresh milk from Velvet Cloud’s farm in Cloonbook, Co.Mayo. Cloonbook cheese is matured for a minimum of three months and has a nutty butter taste, with a natural rind.

Although Cloonbook is made from cows milk, Velvet Cloud is best known for their range of handmade natural sheep’s milk yogurt and cheese, made on the family farm outside Claremorris in Co. Mayo. Due to the mild wet climate in the West of Ireland the Flanagan’s flock can graze an abundance of grass and clover pastures for almost the entire year.

Congrats to the entire Velvet Cloud team!

Irish Cheese Awards

The Irish Cheese Awards 2024 took place at Kilshane House in County Tipperary on Wednesday 24th April. More than 170 cheeses were submitted for judging in late March by an expert panel of tasters.

Check our our member profile for Velvet Cloud here or if podcasts are more your thing we spoke to co-owner Aisling Flanagan a couple of years ago about the Velvet Cloud journey, sheep’s cheese and getting their first barcodes from GS1 Ireland.