For the second time in its 38-year history, the American Cheese Society competition’s Best of Show is Canadian. Not only that, but the runner up is, too. Both winning wheels were made in Quebec, by different creameries, and they topped 1,600 other entries from North America. Fortunately, a Washington State cheese placed third to prevent a Canadian sweep of this prestigious annual judging. That the Canadians performed so well reflects efforts by competition organizers to make participation less onerous for non-U.S creameries. (Border crossing is no easy feat if you’re a cheese.) It also reminds me, unhappily, of how few Canadian cheeses we see in this country.
Sam Neff, a retired Pennsylvania merchant responsible for introducing the superb Old Quebec Vintage Cheddar to the U.S., has a long history of working with Canada. Knowing that every cheese shop in the U.S. is going to want the Canadian winners, I reached out to Neff to ask about the barriers Canadian cheese faces in getting here.
The short answer: subsidies and quotas. Canada (especially Quebec) subsidizes its dairy industry, Neff told me, and U.S. import law bans subsidized products. That’s how we protect our cheesemakers from being undercut. “The same thing is happening with electric vehicles from China,” Neff told me via email.
What’s more, the U.S. has strict quotas on Canadian cheese as a way of protecting American dairy farmers. “Most exports exhaust quotas before the end of January,” says Neff.
Stephanie Ciano, who buys the European cheeses for World’s Best Cheese, a major distributor, said “price conversion and logistics” also contributed to making Canadian cheese cost prohibitive. But surely the logistics of getting cheese here from Europe are even more complex and costly. So I don’t fully get it, but I do know that if you want to taste these two winners, you’ll need a passport.
The top three cheeses
(selected from 100-plus category winners):
Best of Show: Raclette de Compton au Poivre from Fromagerie la Station
A farmstead raw cow’s milk wheel with pink peppercorns in the middle, from a creamery that was entering the competition for the first time. Former judging chair Rachel Perez described it as “nutty, buttery and well balanced—technically well-made and aesthetically beautiful.”
Canadian washed-rind winner : Le Cousin
First Runner Up: Le Cousin from Fromagerie Médard
A soft-ripened washed-rind cow’s milk cheese described by the maker as having an aroma of cooked cabbage and flavors of melted butter, cooked celery and fresh milk.
Bandaged beauty: Beecher’s Flagship Reserve
Second Runner Up: Flagship Reserve from Beecher’s Handmade Cheese
This Seattle producer has been in the winner’s circle before with Flagship Reserve, a bandage-wrapped Cheddar matured for about 13 months. This suberb cheese has won its category at ACS at least five times and was the overall third-place finisher in 2007.
A few other random observations from perusing the competition winners announced last Thursday at the organization’s annual conference in Buffalo:
BelGioioso, the Wisconsin producer of Italian-style cheeses, had an amazing night. My math may be off but I counted six blue ribbons for this company, for products ranging from mascarpone to mixed-milk Gorgonzola.
Some veteran creameries that reliably win ribbons did not disappoint, with first-place finishes for Farm at Doe Run (for five cheeses), Jasper Hill Farm (for Alpha Tolman and Calderwood), Marieke Gouda (for Smoked Gouda and Hatch Pepper Gouda), Spring Brook Farm (for Reading), Uplands Cheese (for Pleasant Ridge Reserve) and Vermont Creamery (for Coupole). But there were some surprising shutouts, too. Rogue Creamery, a former Best of Show winner, did not win any ribbons. Is it possible they entered no cheese?
Avery Jones, the California phenom who won her first ACS blue ribbon at the age of 15, five years ago, hasn’t lost her touch. Her Shooting Star Creamery in Paso Robles, an offshoot of her family’s Central Coast Creamery, nabbed a first place for Leo, and second and third place finishes in other categories for Scorpio and Sagittarius. She outperformed her dad, Reggie Jones, who scored two third-place ribbons for Central Coast Creamery cheeses—although it’s possible that Dad keeps an eye on Avery’s cheeses while she’s away attending college.
My upcoming class on “Blue Ribbon Winners from the American Cheese Society” is sold out, but I’ll be serving more of this year’s ACS blue-ribbon winners on October 8 for the “Holiday Cheese Plate” class. A few seats remain for that.