Did you know that Tenerife was Wallace and Gromit’s favourite holiday destination? No? I’m not surprised as I just made it up. But there’s one moon sized chunk of cheese reason why it’s a claim which wouldn’t be too wide of the mark.

In 2008, Queso Arico curado pimentón was crowned World Champion Cheese out of a field of over 2,400 cheeses at the prestigious World Cheese Awards in Ireland.
Winning the title of World Champion Cheese is an incredible accolade and well deserved as it has to be said that the cheese makers in Arico produce a damn fine cheese.

Their Queso Arico curado pimentón is a beautifully delicate tasting matured goat’s milk cheese with subtle, smooth flavours which positively seduce the taste buds. An attractive rusty paprika coating is more than window dressing, adding a deliciously smoky tang to the pot. In restaurants around Arico, on Tenerife’s eastern slopes, the ‘big cheese’ is served sliced and drizzled with rich, golden local honey – a simple combination, but one that definitely deserves a place on the list of ‘things that make you go mmmm’.

Tenerife’s finest went up against the World’s tastiest again during October 2009 when the World Cheese Awards took place outside of the UK for only the second time in their history, on Gran Canaria.

However, Tenerife’s cheeses didn’t win any prizes this year; the top award went to a Canadian cheese.
Hang on – world beating Canadian cheese? Does such a thing exist? You don’t think the judges accidentally wrote down the letter ‘d’ when it should have been an ‘r’?

(Arico’s award winning cheese can be picked up at most Tenerife supermarkets for around €6 a wheel. For other good Tenerife cheeses, try a taste of semi-cured smoked goat’s cheese in gofio from Benijos in La Orotava, or goat’s cheese flavoured by wild fennel in Teno Alto.)