AUSTRALIA'S top food journalists dined on the country's best dairy produce in Sydney on Tuesday.
And on Monday, the 2013 Australian Grand Dairy Awards were presented at an "intimate' lunch in Melbourne.
Australian Grand Dairy Awards manager Suzi O'Dell, of Dairy Australia, said changing the awards to a smaller presentation and then showcasing the winning products, involved more people nationally, but also set the ground work for a different approach to marketing dairy products.
This is the 14th year of the awards and Ms O'Dell said there would now be a lot more promotions around "the medal" - the mark on the packaging of a dairy product that signifies it as an Australian Grand Dairy Award winner.
"If people see the medal in the supermarket they know they are buying the best product Australia has," she said.
Part of the new marketing campaign involved telling the story of dairy.
It began at last year's awards, where films of "inspiring" dairy farmers were played.
Ms O'Dell said promoting milk products involved linking dairy with a number of other food industry initiatives such as a the Electrolux Young Chef of the Year competition.
She said Dairy Australia's role in the competition involved taking chefs through cheese tastings so they could be sure to "put Australian products on the menu rather than imported".
Cheap Swiss cheese imports were the "biggest competition" for the makers of this year's Grand Champion Cheese - the champion semi-hard and eye cheese Tasmanian Heritage St Claire made by Lion.
Head cheese maker at Tasmanian Heritage and King Island Dairy at Burnie in Tasmania, Ueli Berger, said this Swiss-style cheese made with Australian milk, was unique. He came to Australia from Switzerland 34 years ago specifically to be involved in developing this cheese.
The grand champion dairy product, Bulla Premium Sour Cream, also has a long and rich history, according to Bulla Dairy Food senior product manager Meg Wise.
She said Bulla had been in the cream business for 102 years and it was all still made in batches "not a continuous production line" from the highest-quality cream.
