Next time I bite into a cheese I don’t like, I’ll be tempted to say it’s “barn-y” or “cow-y,” or — if it’s really vile — “cat-y” (as in, smells like cat urine). Or possibly, “soapy” would be an apt description.
If I can’t put my finger on the off-flavor, I’ll just say it’s “unclean.”
If these terms are good enough for certified cheese judges, they’re good enough for an average cheese eater like me. Yes, all of these are acceptable descriptors for cheese judges to use, something I learned during three hours spent with a pair of judges as they scrutinized one of 90 categories in the 2015 U.S. Championship Cheese Contest, held last month at the Wisconsin Center in Milwaukee.
Our category (I could taste but not judge) was open-class semi-soft cheeses. These are cheeses with a moisture content of 40 percent to 50 percent that don’t fit into another category, such as Monterey jack or havarti.
One by one, cheeses submitted from all over Wisconsin and a few other states — wheels, small chunks, one enormous “40-pounder” block — were placed in random order on our table, and the ritual began: Cut off a piece of wax (or plastic), insert the cheese trier, twist and pull out a plug, then sniff, examine, bend, taste, chew and spit.
If you had to sample 112 cheeses in two days, as this pair did judging six categories, you’d spit, too.
This category is “where cheesemakers will just try anything,” explained Mark Johnson, a distinguished scientist with the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research and one of the two judges. “This is their experimentation.”
And so among the two dozen or so selections there were fontinas, a couple of butterkase, a scamorza (a type of mozzarella), a raclette — and a fair number with ambiguous names that meant absolutely nothing to the judges. Snowfields, for example (there were four so named, all aged for different lengths of time), and Reserve Batch.
First up was a creama kasa, a rich, triple-cream cheese. It had “pretty good body,” according to Johnson, who also picked up a metallic note, while the other judge — Kerry Kaylegian, dairy foods research and extension associate at Penn State — thought she detected a bitter or sour flavor. The judges score independently, using a stylus and tablet (no more paper), and compare notes only after they have finished.
This contest uses so-called technical judging. Every cheese (or butter or yogurt) starts with 100 points. In 0.1-point increments, points are taken off for defects. Based on how discernible the defect is — very slight, slight, definite or pronounced — judges are allowed a specific range of points to deduct.
As cheeses are presented and tried, new comments come forth. A fontina tasted “flat,” meaning it didn’t have much flavor and, in this case, was low in salt.
“Salt level is a hard one (to judge) because it’s so much personal preference,” Johnson said. “I take points off only if it’s totally lacking or if the salt level is too high.”
Butterkase (“butter” for its high fat content) should taste “milky with a buttery note,” Johnson said. “It should be a little sweet.” This one was not.
Another cheese had a “harsh aftertaste” (it was “probably too old”).
Kaylegian stopped at one point to explain the difference between a sour or acid taste and a bitter taste. For the former, think of lemons or yogurt, she said. For the latter, think of the bitter taste of coffee or the quinine in a gin and tonic.
And “rancidity” is not necessarily a bad thing. A feta without rancidity? “You’d send it back,” said Johnson, who acknowledged it was a misleading term.
Taking a chance, I offered my two cents on one cheese. “This kind of tastes like something I would clean my kitchen counter with,” I said, more like a question than a statement. Turns out, cheeses can pick up off flavors from residual sanitizers used to clean equipment.
About halfway through, Kaylegian was asked if any of the cheeses she’d tried had knocked her socks off.
Nope. Not yet.
After examining one unopened wheel of cheese, Johnson called out, “We need a red hat!” Red hats are chief judges, and their word rules. When this cheese was deemed too hard to qualify as a semi-soft cheese, it was moved to the open-class hard cheeses category for judging.
“Sometimes that happens,” Johnson said.
Poker faces are the rule as cheeses are sampled, but after trying one cheese Johnson made a face that could scare a baby. This led him to relate an experience he had judging cheese in Australia. It smelled so bad (think bathroom) he refused to eat it, and so did his cohort. A chief judged ruled it “unpalatable,” and it was removed from contention.
“That’s happened once,” said Johnson, who’s been judging contests for many years.
Today’s cheese merely required a few palate-cleanser apple slices to wash the flavor from his mouth.
On the other hand, “Once in awhile you get a cheese that just blows you away and you say ‘wow,’” he said. A couple of cheeses he’d tried the day before were like that.
When judging was completed, final scores for the two judges ranged from 95 to 99.3, with “lots in the 98 range.” There are really no bad cheeses in a contest of this caliber.
Scores between judges are required to be within five points, but Johnson said that’s too much. Typically, scores fall within a point or two. They are averaged for a final score.
And the winner was…? One of the Snowfields, the one aged 15 months, a product of Saxon Creamery in Cleveland, Wis., with 99.25 points. Right behind, at 99.05 points, was Marieke Golden, from Holland’s Family Cheese in Thorp. (In 2013, cheesemaker Marieke Penterman’s Gouda was grand champion in this contest.) Third was a farmer cheese from Mill Creek Cheese in Arena, with 99 points.
The Snowfields made it to the sweet 16, the elite pool re-evaluated by all of the judges on the final day to determine the grand champion and two runners-up. (Top honors this year went to a wheel of Swiss from Ohio.)
While I remain, oh, a few advanced degrees away from professional cheese judging, I am pleased to say that I do remember liking all three of these cheeses. If my brain says “yum,” that’s all I really need to know.
Judging fun
Naturally, some cheeses are more fun to judge than others.
Mark Johnson, a distinguished scientist with the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research, said his favorites are aged Gouda and Parmesan, “because I love the cheeses.”
“If you love the cheeses, it’s easy to judge because you know the best cheese you ever had and you relate it back to that,” he said.
“You don’t want to judge a cheese you’re not familiar with — it’s not fair.”
The hardest cheese classes to judge are the pepper-flavored cheeses, a growing category, said John Umhoefer, executive director of the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association, which sponsors the biennial U.S. Championship Cheese Contest.
One year, he recalled, a judge was unable to judge the next day because the pepper cheeses had “shot his palate.” Entries in the pepper cheese categories this year were up 60 percent.
“The rise of pepper cheeses has amazed us all,” Umhoefer said.
The next hardest category to judge is Swiss. “It’s the one the judges like best,” Umhoefer said, “but it’s also the most challenging. It’s a coveted class to judge. It’s an elite group of judges that get to judge Swiss.”
Not only do Swiss cheeses have the same flavor and texture attributes to consider, there is also the “eye formation” — eyes referring to the holes. In fact, there’s a whole vocabulary around the holes in Swiss cheese.
A failure to form eyes renders the cheese “blind.” Eyes with residual whey are said to be “weeping.” Judges will thump the cheeses and even “listen” for the holes.
This year, those judges did their job exceptionally well. The grand champion of the contest was a wheel of Swiss from Guggisberg Cheese in Millersburg, Ohio.
Complete results of the contest, held last week at the Wisconsin Center, can be found at uschampioncheese.org.
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