Local Tipperary cheesemakers receive lifetime achievement award

Cashel Blue took home the award

Jane and Louis Grubb of Cashel Blue were recently presented with a special Lifetime Achievement Award by the Irish Food Writers’ Guild.

When Jane and Louis Grubb first launched Cashel Blue in 1984, their eight cheeses were made in a repurposed 80-litre copper brewer’s vat using milk from the family farm at Beechmount, near Fethard.

This small beginning was to be followed by great things.

By taking first-class grass-fed milk and introducing it to Penicillium Roqueforti during the cheesemaking process, the Grubbs created something very special: Ireland’s first native blue cheese.

Over the last 41 years, Cashel Blue has won numerous awards and plaudits while production has expanded to keep up with demand at home and abroad.

By carefully blending tradition and technology with the best of local milk this family-run business has managed to become bigger and better without losing the focus on quality and authenticity.

It continues to be one of the best known of the Irish farmhouse cheeses.

In 2003, Jane and Louis’ daughter, Sarah, and her Italian husband Sergio Furno, joined the business, working to ensure that the Cashel Farmhouse Cheesemakers future is sustainable on all levels.

Well-balanced, rich and creamy with a delicious tang, Cashel Blue - what John McKenna called “a monstrously wonderful cheese” back in 1989 - is most democratic.

It can be found across supermarkets, cheese counters and delicatessens or used by chefs on high-end restaurant menus and café sandwich boards.

That is why most Irish people’s first experience of blue cheese is Cashel Blue.

Now in their 32nd year and with no applications or submissions allowed, all eight winners of the 2025 IFWG Food Awards were chosen based solely on quality, integrity, and a commitment to genuine sustainable practices.