A look inside the Minneapolis-based judging process to (maybe) pick the country’s best cheese

Jared Kaufman, Pioneer Press
·9 min read

Not long ago, 1,318 cheeses from around the Western Hemisphere arrived on the loading docks at Huntington Bank Stadium. Each thought it had what it takes to be crowned Best of Show.

The American Cheese Society’s awards, including its championship prize, are among the top domestic recognitions a U.S. cheesemaker can earn. And as of last year, Minneapolis is now the home base for the annual cheese competition.

Inside the stadium’s indoor club areas from May 15-19, a group of cheese judges and volunteers evaluated literal tons of dairy over the several-day process. After cheeses arrived and received a temperature check, they were sorted into one of 131 categories and put into one of several large refrigerated trucks to wait for judgment.

(Sorry — ACS keeps the final results tightly under wraps until the official awards ceremony in July in Des Moines, Iowa. Judges have to sign non-disclosure agreements!)

The individual categories seem almost comically specific. This year’s most-entered division, for example, is “fresh goat cheese with sweet-predominant flavor, aged under 30 days, with 100 percent goats’ milk,” a spokesperson for the competition said.

This level of granularity is necessary, judging and competition committee chair Rachel Perez said, because the point of the competition is not to pit dissimilar cheeses against one another. Rather, judges are advised to score a cheese on its own merits. To consider how successfully it embodies what it strives to be, and to provide feedback to cheesemakers so they can make it a better version of itself.

Awards like ACS’s raise the profile of American artisan cheeses, Perez contends. Particularly attuned shoppers may start asking for winning cheeses by name, and for others, awards are a gentle reminder of what “American cheese” could actually refer to.

“There’s a lot more creativity that happens in American cheesemaking,” Perez said. “What we’ve seen is that the quality of American cheese has gotten better, and the variety has also gotten better. I think that American cheesemakers can really compete with a lot of European cheesemakers right now, which is exciting for us to see.”

Before the pandemic, ACS competition judging took place immediately before the organization’s annual conference, which takes place in a different city every July. After a two-year hiatus in 2020 and 2021, ACS decided to reschedule judging to May and make Minneapolis the permanent home of its competition.

As for why Minneapolis, there are a couple reasons. The Twin Cities has a strong artisan cheese scene, with both independent shops like France 44 and Surdyk’s and well-curated cheese counters at local grocery chains like Lunds & Byerlys and Kowalski’s. The ACS judging process is almost entirely volunteer-run, so there’s a reliable contingent of talented cheesemongers to help, said ACS executive director Tara Holmes.

Plus, we’re convenient: Centrally located, good airport, cheese-friendly spring weather.

Pre-Covid, shipping thousands of pounds of cheese to sweltering cities in mid-July — during a precise couple-day receiving window, no less — created some serious quality-control challenges. Now that judging takes place in Minnesota in May, cheeses have been arriving to judges’ tables in much better condition, Holmes said.

After cheeses receive their category scores and the top wheels advance to Best of Show, the championship round is a somewhat poetically simple end to a rigorous process.

After all, out of 120-plus cheeses that most successfully embody their super-niche individual styles across dozens of technical metrics, which is the winner? It’s ultimately the cheese that makes a group of 34 of the world’s most knowledgeable cheese experts the happiest.

Can we truly say the cheese that was selected here a few weeks ago is the best in the country?

Let’s check in with our judges.

“Which is the one that I would want to keep eating?”

Upstairs, in a large lounge overlooking the field, 17 judging teams sit at 17 tables.

At another table facing them all, a team of ACS judging committee members tabulate results and watch the process unfold, like foreign election observers.

Each judging team consists of three people: two judges and a steward. In crisp white lab coats, we have a technical judge, many of whom are dairy scientists, former or international cheesemakers or certified cheese graders, and an aesthetic judge, whose ranks include cheese retailers, writers and marketing pros.

Standing across from the judges, wearing a forest-green ACS volunteer T-shirt, the steward manages the flow of cheese — from well-organized racks of sheet trays to their judges’ table and back. Most stewards are active cheesemongers, including some of the best in the country: Courtney Johnson of Seattle, for example, is representing Team USA at the prestigious Mondial du Fromage cheesemonger competition in France this fall.

Each cheese is judged by one team and can receive up to 100 points.

Starting from 50, the technical judge subtracts points for defects: Perhaps the rind is not properly developed, or maybe the cheese has developed off-flavors from over-aging. The aesthetic judge can award up to another 50 points on more subjective criteria. Does the size of the wheel make sense? Does it smell appealing? Would this cheese accomplish its purpose in a customer’s home?

Stewards are not judges, so they’re not allowed to weigh in with formal opinions, but they’re largely responsible for making sure cheeses are served to judges in tip-top shape.

After all, cheesemakers themselves are not there to represent their own creations — nor can their reputation precede them, because the entire process is anonymized.

Producers are required to remove any labels or other identifying information from the item itself before submitting it. A wheel or package that cannot be properly made anonymous for judging receives an automatic seven-point deduction, which prevents it from qualifying for the final Best of Show round.

OK, to be fair: The judges are longtime cheese professionals, and some high-profile cheeses are fairly recognizable. But judges are asked to suspend disbelief, Perez said, and to evaluate a cheese as if they have never seen it before.

Because perhaps they haven’t.

Benjamin Roberts, the founding “cheesemonger-in-chief” at France 44 Cheese Shop in Minneapolis and the St. Paul Cheese Shop in the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood, has been enmeshed in the domestic cheese world for more than a decade and a half.

(A disclosure: Prior to joining the Pioneer Press, I worked as a cheesemonger at France 44; Roberts was my supervisor. In that capacity, I served as a volunteer during the 2022 ACS judging process.)

As a second-year aesthetic judge, Roberts is still thrilled to stumble upon something new or even new-to-him while judging at ACS, he said.

“To have a cheese put in front of you; you don’t know what this cheese is, and it’s a raw-milk farmstead cheese, and it tastes great, and it’s really interesting — that’s fun,” he said. “That’s the part I like most of all.”

To officially win a first-place designation and advance to the coveted Best of Show round, the highest-scoring cheese in each category must have earned at least 95 points.

Score thresholds keep standards high; it’s possible, Perez said, that a particularly weak category could produce no first-place winner at all if the highest-scoring cheese only qualifies for second or third place, with score minimums of 90 and 85, respectively.

During the Best of Show round, judges have the opportunity to taste categories’ top cheeses side by side — often for the first time, since, statistically speaking, 16 out of every 17 categories had been assigned to another judging team. Each cheese is displayed on its own cheese plate, across about a dozen carefully curated tables.

During this round, the judges aren’t evaluating technique or innovation: They’re picking their favorite cheese at each table. It’s essentially an anonymous popularity contest, Roberts said, that asks a simple question:

“Which is the one that I would want to keep eating?”

Last year’s Best of Show winner was a meltable raclette-style cheese called Whitney, made by Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont, one of the country’s foremost artisan cheese companies. When the results were announced, Perez said, Jasper Hill sold out of Whitney within days as large stores rushed to stock it.

It’s difficult to make a livelihood as an artisan cheesemaker, Roberts said, and a differentiator like a major award is lucrative — especially at grocery retailers like Whole Foods, Kowalski’s and Lunds & Byerlys, where most cheese is sold pre-cut, grab-and-go style.

But for independent shops like France 44, where cheeses are all cut to order, Roberts said awards are not always as relevant. Cheesemongers who make purchasing decisions for the cheese case do so because they have a deep understanding of both their customer base and the artisan cheese landscape, he said, not necessarily because a certain cheese won an award.

Another wrinkle: Moving the judging from July to May could also overrepresent cows’ milk cheeses, if one were to view the awards as a survey of quality American dairy.

Most goats and sheep give birth in the early spring, which means that’s when farmers get the most milk. And due to U.S. laws that regulate minimum aging times for raw-milk cheeses, certain soft cheeses are not ready in time for the earlier competition date.

Perez, the competition chair, said that as a result of the rescheduled judging — not necessarily due to any change in cheese production trends — the number of goat’s milk and sheep’s milk entries has dropped.

Holmes, the association’s executive director, said ACS is aware of this challenge and is “looking at creative solutions for how to address that.”

All entrants receive individual feedback from the judges. Perhaps, competition organizers say, this could be more valuable than the results themselves, especially as it relates to the broader goal of uplifting American cheese.

It’s validating, Holmes said, to see cheesemakers resubmit cheeses that perhaps were imperfect last year and now taste notably better, due to judges’ feedback.

From Roberts’ perspective, good cheesemaker feedback can raise the high-water mark of not just the dairy industry but also the entire sustainable food system — and more effectively than awards themselves could.

Maybe a cheese didn’t taste right because the milk wasn’t the best it could’ve been, which could be due to the health of the cow, which could be due to the quality of pasture and farming practices, he said.

“I trace it back to what’s important to me, which is good care of the land; good animal husbandry, and just knowing that those two things tend to produce good milk,” he said. “And if you have good milk, that’s how you’re going to make good cheese.”

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