Oser Communications Group

12 The Cheese Guide BY LORRIE BAUMANN It probably never occurred to you to wonder what could set a roomful of Wisconsin cheesemakers to start jumping up and down, leaping and cavorting, whooping and hollering as if they'd just won a world championship. But if you did wonder, we've got Marc Druart's word for it that all of that happened when the team at Emmi Roth USA got the word that their Grand Cru Surchoix had been named the 2016 winner of the World Championship Cheese Contest. "It's a big reward for everybody. When we did win the award, all the cheesemakers were jumping up and down, being so excited to be recognized as the world champion. It is a big achievement," he said. "You work really hard; it's not an easy job to be a cheesemaker. It's very physical; the room where you make the cheese is very hot and humid. It's a big reward – this is where everyone gets super excited." Druart is the 2016 Grand Master Cheese Maker and as Emmi Roth USA's Senior Director of Research and Development, and he's also a creative force behind the winning cheese. He said that the inspiration behind it came from traditional European alpine-style cheese, with ideas adapted to suit American tastes. "We're bridging the two cultures, the European inspiration and our own make," Druart said. "We call this an American Original because this is our view of how we choose a cheese." "What we want to do is to share some ideas about colors and textures that come from Europe, but sometimes the flavor profile has to be changed to appeal to the American market," he added. "Surchoix is very delicate and floral with a lot of sweetness in it. This is one of the things that the U.S. market tends to prefer. It needs to be balanced, not a pure sweetness, a little bit more caramel and a little bit of floral." The win meant that more of Emmi Roth's cheese vats were dedicated to the production of Surchoix, and the wheels made after the cheese was named the world champion are only now coming onto the market after aging for nine months on the wood shelves in Emmi Roth USA's curing cellars. "We're confident that everyone will have a chance to evaluate the product. It's so exciting at first, but after that, you have to find a way to make sure that everyone can have a chance," he said. "That is our goal – to share that experience with as many American people – or visitors coming to the U.S. – to share with them the quality of the cheese that we produce." Surchoix is a member of Emmi Roth USA's family of Grand Cru cheeses: Original, which is aged about four m o n t h s ; R e s e r v e , which is aged for at least six months; and Surchoix, which is aged at least nine months. Grand Cru Surchoix also differs from the others in that it's made with animal rennet rather than the microbial rennet used for the Original and champion World cheese

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