A Mulund fridge & a Ladakhi plateau: India wins 4 medals at global cheese championship

“The tweet from the PM is one of the greatest moments that my entire team and I will remember for our entire lifetime,” said Narang, 39. “It is a phenomenal recognition to have happened for an artisanal craft cheese maker in this country.”

Cheese from India makes its mark globally…

India made an impressive debut at the Mundial do Queijo do Brasil 2026, which is a vibrant international competition for cheese and dairy products. Four Indian products won medals, including 1 Super Gold, 2 Golds and 1 Silver.

The…

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 22, 2026

Nurboo, 35, was equally overwhelmed. “When Jitendraji told me I had won gold, I was happy. But when the Prime Minister and the Ladakh’s Lieutenant Governor tweeted about me, my happiness knew no bounds.”

Narang said the Mundial do Queijo do Brasil saw around 2,700 entries from nearly 30 nations, judged by 250 jurors across different tables. Three judges assess each cheese on flavour, texture and visual appearance — blind, with no knowledge of provenance. Each table produces one super gold, which then competes in the final 14 or 16 from which a world champion is chosen. Eleftheria won a super gold for Gulmarg, a French Brie-style cheese; a gold for Brunost, a Norwegian-style whey cheese; and a silver for Kaali Miri, an aged cheese ball coated in Kerala black pepper, Himalayan pink salt and garlic — “the holy trinity of flavours that everybody in India would love,” says Narang. Nurboo’s Yak Churpi won the second gold.

For Nurboo, the win belongs to Ladakh’s yak churpi — an indigenous cheese the region’s pastoralist communities have been making for generations. He hopes it becomes a tool to revive an economy around yak that has been quietly declining.

A decade ago, none of this existed. Narang was working at Capgemini, baking sourdough over weekends, and couldn’t find cheese to go with it. “I decided to make it myself. I thought, how difficult can it be? I discovered it was extremely difficult.” The ingredients weren’t available in India. She sourced them from abroad in small quantities, tweaked the thermostat of her bedroom fridge to 13 degrees Celsius, put a hygrometer inside to monitor humidity and began aging cheeses. At one point she had 20-25 varieties aging in that single fridge. By 2015, she was working with 80 litres of milk in her mother’s kitchen and no longer willing to treat this as a hobby. She quit her job and taught herself through reading and trial and error, rented a small space in Bhandup and started Eleftheria with a helper. Today Eleftheria has a team of 65, supplies to the Oberoi Group, the Taj Group and restaurants like O Pedro, The Bombay Canteen, CinCin, and chef Sanchez’ Americano and Otra, and has seen 30% year-on-year growth since Covid.

Nurboo never made it to the ceremony in Brazil. He wanted to go personally to attend the competition in São Paulo but missed his vaccination window for yellow fever, a mandatory requirement for travel there. He sent his Yak Churpi with the National Dairy Development Board instead, and let it speak for itself. He belongs to the Changpa community — high-altitude pastoralists from Changthang. He studied until the 10th grade in Ladakh, then trained in sustainable organic farming at SECMOL, Sonam Wangchuk’s alternative school campus. At Nomadic Farm, which his parents founded over 30 years ago, the range covers all yak products — ghee, lassi, curd and churpi. The win, he says, belongs to a tradition far older than him.