The cheese, produced in a small creamery in Portadown by Mark Wright and his team from milk sourced from the family’s multi-award winning dairy farm at Tandragee, is sold in delis and farm shops across Northern Ireland as well as the food hall at Fortnum and Mason in London.

The Virtual Cheese Award for the best in Northern Ireland is the latest in a host of endorsements for the Armagh cheese since the launch of the brand in 2016.

Mark, who set up the cheese business with late brother Dean, said: “We are thrilled to receive this important recognition which is a tremendous endorsement of the quality and taste of our Triple Rose cheese. The award will be enormously beneficial to our marketing endeavours as we seek to build further sales especially in Great Britain and the Republic, our most important external markets.”

Triple Rose is described by Mark as “a circular, white mould, single herd, full–flavoured cheese”.

“Its decadent richness is balanced by salty, lemony notes. It is made from pasteurised cow’s milk with added cream,” he said.

The initial Triple Rose cheese was developed by the company with help from the Food Technology Centre at the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise at Loughry, near Cookstown and was launched at the Balmoral Show in 2018, winning the ‘Best New Product’ award.

The soft, triple cream cheese also won two Gold Stars in the 2019 Great Taste Awards and was a finalist in the 2018 Great British Cheese Awards. It has also proved a winner with judges at the Blas na hEireann Awards, the Irish National Food Awards.

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