ASHWAUBENON, Wis. — The three-day event brings master cheese-makers and judges to the Resch Expo Center where more than 2,400 cheeses and dairy products are meticulously inspected, touched and tasted at the biennial U.S Cheese Championship.
According to master cheese maker Steve Stettler with Decatur Dairy, when it comes to judging cheeses, those wheels and blocks of curds and whey need to have the right stuff.
“Whether it’s a little discrepancy in flavor or there’s some odd-ball thing that shows up, it’s a true competition,” said Stettler.
As for which cheese is the hardest to judge, Richard Guggisberg with Guggisberg Cheese out of Ohio says Swiss can be tricky.
“It’s got to be unique, high-quality milk. It all starts with that. Good cultures, lots of experience and some luck to throw in on top of it,” says Guggisberg. “In our case, swiss cheese is the most difficult cheese to make because you’ve got texture, you’ve got taste, you’ve got creaminess, but the big this is the shape of those eyes. The number, size and shape of those eyes.”
Pam Hodgson with Sartori Cheese says it the goal every two years to come home with at least one award.
“At Sartori, we strive to make cheeses that will please consumers with every pound we sell,” said Hodgson. “We do take the time to look at different classes and categories at the U.S. Cheese Championships and we use that on where to start looking, but really our goal is to make high-quality award-winning cheese every day.”
With so many cheeses and different categories, it takes two judges for each type of cheese.
Cheeses range from mild and sharp cheddars to Latin American Cheeses, smoked cheeses, gouda, string and cheese spreads to name a few.
Steve Schenkoske judges cheddar and says when it comes to looking for a perfect block of cheese, judges must first look at the packaging to see if any wrinkles have formed within the cheese and if there is any waviness within the color of the cheese itself.
Then it all comes down to extracting the core of the cheese with a trier and tasting the product.
“So what you’re trying to do is getting a core sample down from the center of the block because a lot of times you’ll find that there’s uneven cooling, if it didn’t get cooled fast enough the center of the cheese will be entirely different than the surface of the cheese,” said Schenkoske. “Then it comes down to inspecting the cheese itself to see if there are any openings, cracks, or splits. Then we usually smell the cheese to see if it’s clean.”
At this time, judges will break off a piece of cheese and feel it with their fingers to see if the cheese will stick, break easily, and then the judges will taste each sample twice.
Depending on how many cheeses have been submitted for a certain category, judges could go through more than 150 certain cheeses during a single day of judging.
All score sheets start at a hundred points and during the course of tasting and inspecting blocks, wheels and samples points are deducted.
The fewer points deducted, the higher a cheese gets placed in its chance to win its category.
On Thursday, winners of this year’s competition will be revealed via YouTube.
After winners are announced and awards are distributed, master cheese makers and judges alike will return to their companies to begin prep work on next year’s competition, the World Champion Cheese Contest which takes place in Madison.
