I wasn’t able to visit/report on the World Cheese Championship last week, but there is an excellent post from Cheese Underground that includes a video of Willi Lehner’s yodeling.

A few years ago I might have described the World Cheese Championship, organized by the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association, as kind of stodgy old-school competition, at least in comparison to the American Cheese Society judging.  There may have been (and may remain) some truth to that notion, but it is also a bit of an unfair comparison. What I now find most remarkable about the World Cheese Championship is that it has become a hodgepodge of old-school, new-school, and other-school, with artisan cheesemakers from the U.S., old world craftsmen from Europe and even large manufacturers of commodity cheese competing side by side. Just glancing at the list of winners I noticed a Jasper Hill/Cabot Creamery collaborative Colby is  followed by a Monterrey Jack from “D Shift Cheese Dept.” of Southwest Cheese Co., Clovis N.M.  That’s quite the juxtaposition. I’ve been to Southwest Cheese, and I can tell you that it is an amazing cheese factory that does a great job of turning tons of Holstein milk into 640-pound blocks of cheese that ends up in a taco served through a drive-up window.

Kraft Foods wins awards at the World Cheese Championship, but so does Vermont Butter and Cheese Creamery. I suppose the ACS judging has changed in recent years too, now including more entries from some very large cheese companies. The two competitions may be growing more similar in a sense, and this might be a sign that artisan cheese is growing up.  Could we find a parallel in the craft beer world? Sure we could. Doesn’t Anheuser Busch enter a number of beers into competition at the Great American Beer Festival each year?

So what does this mean for artisan cheese and craft beer enthusiasts and the folks who make the products we love?  Well, this might be a good time to point out that Cheese and Cheers encourages comments and discussion.  See below.