3,000 Cheeses. 25 Countries. 1 Winner. Be There.

Brace yourselves. The world’s largest technical cheese competition is coming to Madison, and with it, a rare opportunity to taste 50 international cheeses, witness judges from 16 nations execute the final round of judging, and be on hand as the 2016 World Champion Cheese is crowned.

Just 500 tickets are available for Cheese Champion, an evening of world champion cheese tasting on Wednesday, March 9 at the Monona Terrace Grand Ballroom in downtown Madison, Wisconsin. All tickets are being sold in advance through Wisconsin Cheese Originals for $25 at www.worldchampioncheese.org. Get yours now to avoid being on the outside looking in at hundreds of people noshing on fabulous cheese.

In fact, with samples of at least 50 different cheeses from every corner of the globe, attendees are encouraged to pace themselves to avoid entering a cheese coma. Complimentary celebrity chef appetizers will also be served. And this being Wisconsin, you can count on at least two cash bars serving up craft beers and wines.

Cheese Champion is the signature event of the 2016 World Championship Cheese Contest, held every two years in Madison. Ticket proceeds benefit the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research graduate student program, ensuring another generation of dairy scientists in America’s Dairyland. So basically, you get to eat your weight in rare cheese, watch a world class cheese competition, and contribute to the future success of cheesemakers everywhere. Win. Win. Win.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m., with the Championship Round of Judging to start at 7 p.m. Come join me and a host of volunteers as we spend all day preparing tables and tables of fabulous cheese for you! Get your tickets early, because this event WILL sell out.

Behind the Curtain at the World Championship Cheese Contest

The World Championship Cheese Contest came and went in Madison this week. With it, hundreds of industry volunteers, cheesemakers and international judges unloaded, unboxed, unwrapped, inspected, labeled, opened, sniffed, tasted, spat out, rewrapped, reboxed, and reloaded 2,504 cheeses one by one, wheel by wheel, wedge by wedge, all in a quest to find the best.

Mission accomplished. While the Dutch and Swiss again took top honors (the World Champion was Vermeer, a lowfat Dutch Gouda made by FrieslandCampina – yes, that’s right, the frickin’ Dutch beat us with a lowfat Gouda), Wisconsin cheesemakers did well overall, earning gold medals in 30 of the 82 classes.

Held over the course of three days at the Monona Terrace, the World Championship Cheese Contest is one of the best cheese events held in Wisconsin. That’s because it’s expertly executed by the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association (WCMA), which has been running the contest since 1957.

Once held in obscurity in a butter cooler in Green Bay, the contest now takes center stage at a sprawling convention center in the state capital. Today, the WCMA, led by executive director John Umhoefer, calls on more than 200 volunteers to help run the three-day contest. Many – perhaps even most of the volunteers – are Wisconsin cheesemakers who happily carve three days out of their own cheesemaking schedule to schlep around cheese made by others from around the world.

From Monday morning through Wednesday mid-day, two distinct bodies of cheese people fill the voluminous Exhibition Hall at Monona Terrace. One group wears white caps and white jackets, and stands in front of the red velvet curtains. These are the judges. From Argentina to Australia, 20 international cheese experts wind their way to Madison to spend three days inspecting, sniffing, tasting and spitting out everything from Gruyere to Gorgonzola (they spit out each cheese so as to not have hundreds of samples mulling around in their tummies – I’m not sure all the Pepto Bismol in the world could cure that kind of stomach ache).

The second group wears blue hats and white coats, and mostly works behind the red velvet curtains. This is the “B Team”, as they are affectionately called, and these are the folks – all Wisconsin cheesemakers and industry volunteers – who unbox and unpack each and every piece of cheese for the judges to inspect, and then repack and rebox to put back on pallets to be zipped back to the cooler by another set of volunteers who have moving pallets down to a science.

While both of these teams are busy working, a separate team in a separate room, mostly filled with computers, printers and cans of caffeine, tally the judges’ scores. This team – led by the amazing Jane Cisler at WCMA – is the invisible hub of the contest, always working, often running, to get scores entered as soon as possible and up and live on the contest website. Without Jane and her team of volunteers, the contest simply would not happen. They are truly the wizards behind the curtain.

By Wednesday afternoon, judges have whittled down the 2,504 cheeses to just 82. These are the Gold Medal cheeses – the top cheeses in each of the classes. This year, the contest mixed things up a bit, and had the judges pare the top 82 down to a “Sweet 16”, which were then judged in front of a sold-out live audience at an evening gala in the Monona Terrace ballroom. More than 400 super foodies showed up to mingle with cheese industry folk and taste 50 cheeses from around the world, all the while watching the final round of gold-medal judging.

At about 8:20 p.m., the crowd was rewarded for its patience with the naming of the Second Runner-Up (an Appenzeller from Switzerland), the First Runner-Up (a washed-rind Winzer Kase from Switzerland) and finally, the World Champion – the aforementioned lowfat Gouda.

As hundreds cheered for the Dutch judge as he hefted his native country’s wheel of cheese above his shoulders (the actual cheesemaker won’t accept his medal until an April banquet in Milwaukee), the wizards both in front of and behind the curtains – the volunteers, the B Teamers, and the rest of the judging crew – all took a moment to stand and smile, satisfied with another year of finding the big cheese. Well done, crew. See you in 2014.

2012 World Championship Cheese Contest

Brace yourselves, Wisconsin. More than 2,500 cheeses are coming to Madison for the World Championship Cheese Contest in March. Are you ready?

In good news, the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association is ready to roll. They’ve been hosting the World Contest for decades, and have a streamlined process of receiving, sorting, spitting, evaluating and awarding cheeses down to a science. That’s a good thing, because this year, a record-breaking 2,503 entries from 24 nations around the world were entered.

All cheeses will be judged between March 5-7, with viewing open to the public during daytime hours at the Monona Terrace. The real shindig, however, will happen the evening of Wednesday, March 7, when the public is invited to attend an exclusive tasting of more than 20 international and Wisconsin cheeses, and witness the final round of judging, live and in person. Tickets for “An Evening at the World Championship Cheese Contest” are $25 and are going fast. Buy yours now at www.cheesecontest.com because this event WILL sell out.

This year, several new nations have entered cheese into the contest, including India, Romania, Estonia and Croatia. They’ll join the returning nations of Argentina, Australia, Austria, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany,  Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States.

Forty international judges will work from Monday, March 5 through noon on Wednesday, March 7 to sniff, taste and examine each entry, working in teams of two.  The top three scoring cheeses and butters in each class will earn gold, silver and bronze medals, respectively.

Each two-person judging team pairs a U.S. judge with an international expert.  This year, judges hail from Argentina, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, joining 20 judges from 13 states in the U.S.

More than 250 dairy industry volunteers — including yours truly — will provide support as judges work through more than 50,000 pounds of cheese and butter entries. I know I’m looking forward to my official “B-Team” ball cap again this year. Hey – there has to be a perk to hauling heavy boxes of cheese to judging tables all day, right?

It’s important to note that the World Championship Cheese Contest is a technical evaluation of cheese entries, using an objective measure of cheese defects to select the products in each class that best exemplify perfection for a cheese variety. The highest scoring cheeses and butters earn a gold medal, with silver and bronze medals awarded to second and third place finishers in each class.

The Contest is open between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Monday, March 5 and Tuesday, March 6 in the Exhibit Hall of the Monona Terrace Convention Center in Madison, Wis.  First round judging will be completed Wednesday, March 7 from 9:00 a.m. to noon.

This Championship Round, set for 7 p.m. during the Wednesday, March 7 public event, will be broadcast as a live, video-streamed program on the WCMA website.  In addition, contest results and digital images will be posted on the website throughout the competition.  Visit www.worldchampioncheese.org for complete contest coverage.

In 2010, cheesemaker Cedric Vuille from Formagerie de La Brevine in the tiny village of La Brevine, Switzerland, was named World Champion in the Championship Round for his Le Gruyere Switzerland. The Swiss cheeses have been popular, often winning the World title. A U.S. World Champion is long overdue. Fingers crossed 2012 is our year!

Hook’s Cheese: Almost 40 Years & Still Going Strong

Nearly 40 years ago, a pair of college sweethearts decided to make a living making cheese. Today, that same couple, Tony and Julie Hook, are still going strong, crafting more than 50 cheese varieties, including a stunning line-up of award-winning blues and aged Cheddars at their Hook’s Cheese factory in Mineral Point, Wis.

Renown to locals and tourists alike as the super enthusiastic duo who samples and slings cheese under the “Hook’s Cheese” tent every Saturday at the Dane County Farmer’s Market, the Hooks have developed a first-class model for making award-winning cheese by buying fresh milk from the same group of small, local dairy farmers for the past three decades.

“The farmers know what kind of milk we want, and we pay them a good price for it,” says Tony Hook. “It’s a system that’s worked for 35 years.”

It’s also a system that provides the basis for consistent, high-quality cheese. The Hooks know this well, as they started that system back in 1977. That was the year they were hired as cheesemakers at Buck Grove, a factory dating back to 1887, which was rebuilt after a fire consumed the original building in 1925. At Buck Grove, they made mostly Cheddar and Monterey Jack, but it was a 1982 Colby that put the pair on the map.

That year, Julie’s Colby entry won the “Best of Class” award in the World Cheese Championship, a medal coveted by cheesemakers around the globe. And, as if that weren’t enough, her cheese was then judged against the winners of all other classes, and was named the “Finest Cheese in the World.” It beat 482 entries from 14 states and 16 countries. Wisconsin Cheesemaker Julie Hook was, and still is, the only woman to win the World Championship Cheese Contest (see the list of world champions).

The Hooks continued to make their world-winning Colby and other cheeses at Buck Grove until 1987, when the factory was closed after its patron farmers could not afford the $24,000 to modernize the factory’s pasteurizer to meet new state regulations.

So the Hooks decided to purchase an idle factory in the village of Mineral Point. Their farmers followed, and continued shipping high-quality milk to the now Hook’s Cheese on Commerce Street. Their new factory – well, actually old, as the factory dates back to 1929 – allowed the Hooks to start aging cheese in the facility’s three aging caves, one of which is 16 feet underground.

“When we bought the plant, one of the things we really liked was that it offered a lot of cold storage,” Tony says. “So we started aging Cheddar. We thought we’d go maybe three or five years, which back then, was a good, aged Cheddar. Now we age it up to 15 years, and have some set aside to go up to 20 years.”

The latest batch of Hook’s 15-year Cheddar went on sale in early November at select specialty cheese shops — click here for the list — and retails for between $50 and $60 a pound. I’ve never tasted a Cheddar so aged, yet still a bit creamy amongst its crumbles and flavor crystals. Mmmmm … I say it’s worth every penny.

In addition to the couple’s amazing aged Cheddars, the Hook’s are also well known for their blues, which they developed in the mid ’90s after customers at the Dane County Farmer’s Market began asking for a Wisconsin blue.

Their first result was Hook’s Original Blue, launched in 1997, and still considered by many to be THE benchmark against which all blues are judged. In 2001, the Hooks’ followed with a Gorgonzola, which won a Silver Medal at the 2010 World Championship Cheese Contest. In 2004, they developed two new blue-veined cheeses: Tilston Point, a drier, washed-rind and some might say a “stinky” blue, and Blue Paradise, a double-cream and sweet, smoothy blue.

One of my favorites, Bloomin’ Idiot, followed a few years later. I still remember the first time Tony showed me this bloomy-rind, blue-rind cheese at his plant, back in May, 2009, when he let me make cheese with him (read: mostly let me get in his way).

Finally, the Hooks’ Little Boy Blue, a sheep’s milk cheese and a sister to Hidden Springs Creamery’s, Bohemian Blue, was launched a couple of years ago. Little Boy Blue won a Best of Class Award at the 2011 American Cheese Society competition. (I let out a “woot woot” for them at the awards ceremony in Montreal).

Phew. That’s a lot of cheeses, and I didn’t even mention their Sweet Constantine, Stinky Fotene, Parmesan or Aged Swiss. Too many cheeses, too little space. Let’s just say that from world-renown Colby to record-setting Aged Cheddar to award-winning Blues, the Hooks have seen it all in their 40 years of cheese production.

Tony sums it up this way: “In 1970, when I was apprenticing at the Barneveld Cheese plant right out of high school, we were still getting milk in cans – I think we were one of the last factories to do so. Then at Buck Grove, most farmers had switched to bulk tanks, so the milk got delivered in milk trucks. At our factory in Mineral Point, I picked up the milk until 1999, when I finally hired a trucker because I was too busy making cheese.”

“Too busy making cheese” led the Hooks, in 2001, to make a switch they say is the key to their success today. Ten years ago, they were making cheese six or seven days a week, selling all but what went to the farmers market to a large distributor, where it ended up being sold under a variety of other company’s labels. Today, they make cheese two or three days a week and it all carries their label.

“In 2001, we put everything under our own label and set our own prices,” Tony says. “We always made high quality cheese, at least I’d like to think so. We just decided to pay more attention to each batch and to grow into other varieties.”

I’d say the Hooks’ have accomplished that and much more. At more than 50 different varieties and at least three different walls full of awards, the Hooks are still going strong. They even have a succession plan in place: younger brother Jerry Hook has joined the operation and now has his cheesemaker’s license. And then there’s the next generation. “The grandkids are coming up, so who knows?” he says with a smile. Yes, I definitely predict there will be more Hook’s cheese in the future.