Llanboidy cheesemakers scooped another prestigious award with their new Cilowen Organic Cheese at the World Cheese Awards held at Olympia in London recently when they were awarded the John Webb trophy for the best new cheese marketed in the UK this year.

Their well known Llanboidy Cheese also won a bronze award in the class for cheese produced on a farm or dairy not exceeding output of two tonnes per week.

Liz McMahon, of the 2001 World Cheese Awards, said a record number of cheeses from around the world entered the competitions and the quality was exceptionally high.

Sue Jones, proprietor of Llanboidy cheesemakers, said: This is absolutely fabulous and a credit to my cheesemaker Alice Wells and my family who have been extremely supportive to me, and to the quality of the organic milk which is locally sourced and provided by the Welsh Organic Milk Group, Calon Wen.

During the past 14 months we have spent a considerable amount of time and effort perfecting a cheese recipe to complement our existing Llanboidy cheeses.

This has been particularly difficult because the Llanboidy cheeses have a robust and unique flavour which comes from the unpasteurised milk of our herd of rare-breed Red Poll Cows and we were intending to use local organic milk from present day breeds of cow for our new Cilowen Organic cheese.

After combining certain characteristics of a number of traditional recipes and numerous tastings of the 16 different batches we had made, we eventually settled for batch eight as the recipe for Cilowen Organic - and now we know we are onto a winner!

Winning this award will bring our cheese to the attention of the organic consumer and the organic trade buyers and thus open up new markets for Cilowen Organic. This will mean that we will be processing more local milk which will be of benefit to our local community.

Cilowen Organic has been approved by the Soil Association and carries their registration certificate.

This follows success at the British Cheese Awards last month where Cilowen Organic not only won the gold medal in the new cheese section, but went on to win the Best British Organic Cheese - beating over 70 new and established cheeses of all types.

Llanboidy Cheesemakers were also awarded a gold medal in the Modern British Cheese category for their well established Llanboidy Cheese. This is made with the unpasteurised milk from their own herd of rare breed Red Poll Cows - an old breed of cattle whose milk was traditionally considered as being eminently suitably for cheese-making.

Sue added: Our Red Poll cows attracted Prince Charles attention during his visit to the British Cheese Awards and he told us there used to be a herd at Sandringham Castle. He was amazed that we are the only known cheesemakers in Europe to use this old breed of cows milk for cheesemaking.

Sue, a member of the Welsh Dairy Strategy Group and the Dairy Marketing Initiative, is a fervent believer in adding value to Welsh milk before its export out of Wales.

She said: It is extremely important for organic production to be close to the source of the raw ingredient or else one loses the integrity of the organic label and the environmental rationale for the organic label.

Llanboidy Cheesemakers are extremely grateful for the financial and technical assistance plus the support and encouragement received from the Welsh Development Agency and their Food Directorate, the National Assembly for Wales and Carmarthenshire County Council.