Bungay cheese Baron Bigod wins Fine Food Digest’s ‘Best British Cheese’ award for second year in a row

A Suffolk cheese which is growing in huge popularity has been crowned ‘Best British Cheese Brand’ for a second year running by the Fine Food Digest Brands survey.

Baron Bigod, made on Fen Farm Dairy in Bungay, near Beccles, won the accolade after British independent cheese retailers chose it as their top cheese in an annual vote run by The Guild of Fine Food.

The Flixton Road produced Brie-de-Meaux style cheese is only a handful of its type in the world to be made by the farmer on the farm – Jonny and Dulce Crickmore.

On finding out the news, Fen Farm Dairy said on its Facebook page: “Thank you to everyone who has eaten their fair share of Baron and helped us make it to the top of a list we never dreamed we would make once, let alone twice.

“Thank you to every one of our team for being the best every day.”

The milk for cheese is from the farm’s herd of free range Montbeliarde cows which graze on the site’s marshland.

The cheese, described as having a nutty, mushroom rind with a delicate, fresh citrussy centre, is hand made in small batches and aged for up to eight weeks in a ‘cave-like environment’.

Not only is the cheese sold nationally, the farm has two shops - one on the farm’s site with milk and cheese vending machines and the other is at the Roy Humphrey's site on the A140, between Diss and Eye.