Haddington’s The Cheese Lady is crowned best cheesemonger in Scotland

Haddington's The Cheese Lady, aka Svetlana Kukharchuk, is all smiles after being crowned the best in Scotland at an industry awards event.

The shop was recognised at the Farmer Shop and Deli Retailer Awards as they announced their regional finalists for 2022 on Monday.

The Cheese Lady shop, at 3 Court Street in Haddington, won the Scotland Regional Award – and will now go head-to-head (or cheese to cheese) with a selection of cheesemongers from all over the UK as they vie to win the prestigious national award.

Tweeting the results of the regional awards, organisers said: "A big congratulations to Svetlana and the team @TheCheeseLadyUK who won #FSDAwards Scotland Regional Award.

"Judges said: “Love this – it has real personality, great website – especially the 'I like...' section to provide other cheeses you might like”.

"Keep up the hard work guys."

Kukharchuk said: “We are completely thrilled and honoured. We are really, really excited and it feels like all the hard work we have been putting in is slightly paying off.

“We have been working really, really hard over the last couple of years.”

Say cheese: Haddington's The Cheese Lady, aka Svetlana Kukharchuk, is all smiles after being crowned the best in Scotland at an industry awards event.

On its website, the Cheese Lady’s mission statement reads: ‘Our speciality is farmhouse and artisan cheese.

‘We source cheeses that are crafted by the masters of cheesemaking craft who really care about the quality of their milk, traditional cheesemaking and sustainability.

‘Our mission is to inspire wholesome and joyful living - one person, one fine cheese, one occasion at a time.

‘We believe that fine cheese is good for you. It is good for your body and good for your soul’.

Russia-raised Kukharchuk last year she published The Cheese Connoisseur's Handbook.

Speaking about the book, she said: “The book was really a labour of love and came from my passion for cheese and a desire to share with people what I've learned about it so far, after over 15 years in the fine cheese industry”.

In the book, published by Rethink Press, she writes: “I grew up in Russia, in a culture where most women, desperate to look thin, were caught up in a desperate cycle of bingeing and starving. Not surprisingly, I believed that any ounce of weight on my bones was unattractive and that you had to be slim to be beautiful. This outlook was ingrained into me and stayed with me for the majority of my teenage years. It resulted in an eating disorder and obsession with my looks and weight until I was given a stark wake-up call in my early twenties by an honest doctor who told me that I would die prematurely if I carried on the same way. This started my transformation and evolution to where I am today.

“I immersed myself in studying nutrition. The newly gained knowledge gave me the power to make educated and better decisions. The main learning points were that food had to be natural, unadulterated and ideally not processed and had to be enjoyed in balance - not too much but not too little. This opened my eyes and made food choices much easier. Today I choose real natural foods, whereas anything marketed by McDonald’s or similar businesses has no appeal to me. I have about as much desire to consume anything from the Golden Arches as I do to eat my own shoe.

“A few years after I started my nutritional transformation, I found myself living and working in one of the greatest cities in the world - New York City. Fresh out of university in Pennsylvania, I moved to New York to look for a ‘proper job’, which I thought was going to be in something to do with international relations (my major at university), but instead I fell in love with cheese.”