Emiko Nakayama only began learning to make cheese three years ago, and yet she has suddenly found herself in the international spotlight. Her creation, Setana, a Camembert cheese, won a top award of Super Gold at the World Cheese Awards held late last year in Viseu, Portugal.
Only 104 of the 4,786 global entries were awarded Super Gold status by a panel of world-leading cheese experts, which put Setana in the top 2.2% of the competition.
It’s a remarkable achievement for Cheesedom, a small cheese workshop on the northern island of Hokkaido. The business was founded in January 2022 by Masato Saito, a local fisherman and hunter. Partly inspired by a small cheese workshop in town that had closed down, he decided to give cheese-making a try after talking with an old acquaintance who produced high-quality organic milk.
