by Michelle Muldoon
We all know the Midwest is the land of dairy, but did you know a very special cheese event happens every year right here in Minneapolis? Most people outside of the industry probably don’t know that the American Cheese Society (ACS) holds Judging & Competition for the annual American cheese awards at the University of Minnesota campus. It happened in late May, and I got to be there!
ACS is the foremost group supporting the domestic cheese world, from farm to counter and everywhere in between. They are also the certifying body for Certified Cheese Professionals like myself and several other France 44 employees you know and love. They hold a conference every summer, the crowning event of which is the awards ceremony, where the best North American cheeses (and other dairy!) of the year are given their due in front of a cheering audience of industry folks.
But how do they know which cheeses are the best? That’s where Judging & Competition comes in: judging pairs are tasked with blind tasting entries from across the continent and determining which ones are a cut above the rest. There are tons of categories covering myriad styles, milks, and products. The top three from each category are given awards, and first place from each category competes for the coveted Best in Show. This all happens right here in Minneapolis, over the course of about a week.
As a career cheese professional who relocated here to chase my cheese dreams, getting to volunteer for this event felt like winning the lottery. I was able to steward, which means I was assigned to a judging pair for the duration of the event. My responsibility was to make the judges’ jobs as easy as possible: bringing racks of anonymized cheese to them, locating them in order, then presenting each one, allowing them to inspect and taste them all. It is a high hospitality position, one that my time behind the counter prepared me for. I was able to ask questions, see things in person I’d only ever read about before, and hang out with other curd nerds like me.
Most of all, my time at Judging & Competition marked a career progression that makes me so grateful to Minnesota and the Midwest, for welcoming me with open arms into the beautiful cheese landscape that was carved out before me. To be in a room with so many other cheese professionals, of all types, felt like the culmination of years of work, and a reminder of how much more there is to learn and love.
I love cheese because it’s delicious, of course, but also because it is unknowable. It’s the end result of thousands of years of art and culture and science, tangible proof of the humanity that came before us. We won’t know who won best cheese in North America until the conference in July, but this experience made me see that by coming to Minnesota and joining the France 44 team, I’ve already won.
