If it's the U.S. Championship Cheese Contest, it must be a big day for cheddar
ASHWAUBENON – The U.S. Championship Cheese Contest had every kind of cheese: mild cheddar, sharp cheddar, aged cheddar, young cheddar and cheddar blue.
Well, this is Wisconsin.
The championship, which kicked off Tuesday at the Resch Center, included 2,414 entries in 177 classes from 31 states and Puerto Rico. New this year were classes for sour cream and cultured dairy dips. Winners were decided by 38 judges from 15 states.
But the top five classes, by number of entries, were mild cheddar, sharp cheddar, shredded cheeses, aged cheddar and medium cheddar. There were 285 cheddar entries, nearly 12% of all entries, in eight classes.
That said, the most popular cheese in the United States is mozzarella — because of pizza. Cheddar is a close second, said Sarah Guttmann of Plymouth, of Masters Food Gallery Inc., who conducted judging demonstrations at the contest.
Lucy Jeter of Clemson University became the contest's first student judge after winning — wait for it — the cheddar judging competition at the 100th Collegiate Dairy Products Evaluation Contest in Milwaukee last year. She was first in cheddar judging and third overall, among more than 40 student competitors.
That contest included, along with cheeses, foods such as milk, cottage cheese, ice cream, butter and strawberry yogurt, but "cheddar is the most specific and most harshly criticized," Jeter said.
She spent about five hours a week for a semester preparing for the competition. "There are a lot of nuances with cheddar, depending on age, especially when you compare them side by side," she said.
Jeter, a graduate student who wants to work in dairy research and development, is shadowing professional judges on Tuesday and Wednesday. She hopes to some day be one of them. "I would hope so. It's a lot of fun," she said.
The cheese championship is known for its openness and transparency. Judges are arrayed in a u-shaped line of tables. Signs identify the judges, their affiliation and the type of product being judged. The less-harried among them will answer questions while doing their work, and that includes most of them.
Last year, at the world championships in Madison, also hosted by the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association, demonstration sessions, conducted by experienced dairy professionals, explained the judging process, using different types of cheeses as examples. Samples were handed out for each. As might be imagined, the sessions were popular.
More: Swiss cheesemaker wins third consecutive World Championship Cheese Contest; Wisconsin wins 39 classes
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The association carried the demonstrations over for this year's U.S. championship, and the morning's first session was attended by about 40 cheese lovers, who all sat through the more than hourlong presentation, which greatly relieved the number of questions working judges had to respond to.
Liz Tienor of Manitowoc said it's tempting to think of cheese as just being solid milk, but the demonstration painted a different picture. "It's just the little blips of information you get ... it's made in caves and it has holes you put oxygen in" that makes it clear what an exacting process cheese making is, she said.
For a judge who's inspecting 54 entries of mild cheddar in a day, the lack of interruption is appreciated, said Grace Atherton, cheese makers communications director.
The contest is free and open to the public from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday at the Resch Expo. Championship judging on Thursday is closed to the public, but the announcement of the new champion and the runners up will be livestreamed at 2 p.m. that day at USChampionCheese.org.
In addition to samples at the demonstration, the event includes four tables of cheeses to sample — more than just cheddar, although there's plenty of that, including one on Tuesday made with Spotted Cow beer that tasted like, well, Spotted Cow beer.
Contact Richard Ryman at rryman@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @RichRymanPG, on Instagram at @rrymanPG or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/RichardRymanPG
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Cheddar dominates contest, but more than 2,000 other entries compete
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