Cheese Lovers Gather for US Cheese Championship
The United States Championship Cheese Contest 2019 took place between March 5 and 7 in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Cheese lovers had a chance to watch judges smell, taste, and rate over 2,500 different cheeses from across the country, as well as trying some themselves.
"People fly in from across the country to go to this," said John Umhoefer, executive director of the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association, which organizes the contest.
The competition has 116 categories, and a Baby Swiss cheese made by Guggisberg Cheese in Ohio was chosen as the overall winner.
The contest, now considered the nation's largest cheese, butter, and yogurt competition, has come a long way since it started in a butter factory's garage in 1981. "[We started with] six people judging a couple hundred cheeses," said Umhoefer. "Now, we've got 2,555 cheeses, butters, and yogurts."
Gordon Edgar, who has written two books on cheese, says that America has developed a taste for quality cheese over the last few decades. "There are so many more good producers of cheese in the United States than there used to be," said Edgar.
In the past, people would buy French cheese if they wanted to impress visitors, Edgar said. "Now if they have visitors, they want to buy American cheese to impress them, to show them how good American cheese is."
