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GourmET nEWS SEPTEmbEr 2017 www.gourmetnews.com nEWS & noTES 8 Albertsons Companies Appoints Kevin Turner Vice Chairman, Senior Advisor to the CEO Albertsons Companies, LLC is bringing in Kevin Turner, former Chief Operating Of- ficer at Microsoft, to be Vice Chairman of the board of managers of AB Acquisition LLC., its direct parent, and Senior Advisor to the Chairman and Chief Executive Offi- cer, Bob Miller. Turner brings decades of retail and tech- nology experience to his new role with the company, including roles at Walmart and Microsoft. His tenure at Walmart began as a cashier in 1985 and culminated in his ap- pointment to CEO and president of SAM's Club and executive vice president of Wal- mart Stores, Inc., a position he served in from 2002 to 2005. During his time at Mi- crosoft, from 2005 to 2016, Turner led a number of teams including worldwide sales and marketing at its retail stores division, corporate information technology and op- erations. Key accomplishments include his leadership of the company's cloud services adoption as well as the sales and marketing efforts behind Office 365. "Albertsons Companies is building out its digital marketing and information tech- nology teams to ensure we are best posi- tioned to capitalize on the dynamic changes occurring in our marketplace," Miller said. "The skill and experience of our operations team is unparalleled. Kevin's retail acumen, commitment to innovation and leadership skills complements our team's expertise and enhances our ability to serve our customers for many years to come." GN Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board Names Ben Kroeplin as Digital Content Manager Ben Kroeplin has joined the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board as its new Digital Content Manager. Raised on a dairy farm in west-central Wisconsin, Kroeplin joins WMMB with more than a decade of experience in mar- keting, communications and broadcast journalism, including reporting for Wis- consin-based WQOW and producing and anchoring for KIEM-TV in Eureka, California. Most recently, Kroeplin worked as a senior communications spe- cialist at University of Wisconsin White- water. "We are very excited to welcome Ben to our team," said Suzanne Fanning, Vice President of National Product Communi- cations at WMMB. "Ben's expertise in broadcast and digital media will not only help us expand our digital footprint, but also aid in our ongoing efforts to share the story of Wisconsin's hard-working dairy farmers and cheesemakers with consumers nationwide." As Digital Content Manager, Kroeplin will develop strategy for the organization's digital marketing campaigns, including act- ing as lead in the development and produc- tion of WMMB's new Wisconsin to Table recipe video series. Kroeplin has a bachelor's degree in jour- nalism from the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire and is currently pursuing a mas- ter's degree in business administration from the University of Wisconsin Madison. He resides in Sun Prairie with his family. GN Keynote Speech Continued from PAGE 1 As in previous years, the expo features morning exercise and fitness sessions be- fore the day fully begins. "This year, we have Olympian Nick Willis offering a run- ning clinic and shake-out run on Thursday, and an all-level CrossFit session on Friday morning. We're also hosting a community breakfast on Friday morning. The breakfast is held on an outside terrace, so it's a great opportunity to mingle. It used to have a single sponsor, but this year, there are mul- tiple sponsors." A local community retail summit will help local community retailers "survive and thrive," Fitch says. The NEXTY Awards will recognize 22 producers in a variety of categories, includ- ing best new organic food, best new sweet snack, best new supplement, best new packaging and an editor's choice award. For a full list of educational sessions, more about Expo East and to register to attend, visit the show's website at www.expoeast.com. GN ACS Winners Continued from PAGE 1 St. Malachi. St. Malachi Re- serve shared second place in last year's competition. Third place went to the Cellars at Jasper Hill's Harbison. Last year's third-place winner was Greensward, which is a variant that starts with Harbison and is then aged by Murray's Cheese with a cider wash. The three cheeses that won the best of show category this year were among almost 400 winners from among 2,024 entries submitted this year by 281 cheese compa- nies. They were judged by 22 pairs of judges, with one judge from each two-per- son team scoring the cheese on its aesthetic values and the other judging on technical even from this batch, since the wheels that weren't set aside for the competition have long since been sold, and most likely, al- ready consumed. "When you have a cheese that's aged for two years, to have this in- credible honor is a challenge," Menard said in recognition of the difficulties of supply- ing the market with a cheese that's sud- denly in extra demand because it's won an important award. Nevertheless, the consumers who are now inspired by the award to seek out the cheese can expect that the Tarentaise Re- serve they can find at their local cheese shops will still be an exceptional experi- ence, according to Stephenson. "We're looking for consistency in our production methods," he said. "If you want to make this cheese, you have to fall in love with it.... We were taught by people who have done this for thousands of years." GN merit, said Dr. Stephanie Clark, who chaired this year's judging panel. Cheeses were judged in 123 different categories and had to achieve minimum scores to qualify for any ribbon at all in their category. First- place winners in their categories were then re-judged by the entire panel to determine the best-of-show winners. It's a blind tast- ing, Clark noted. "Judges don't have any idea of what a cheese is," she said. "It's, 'Did it shine that day?'" Tarentaise Reserve is an alpine-style farmstead cheese produced from milk pro- vided by the Spring Brook Farm's herd of Jersey cows, which are part of an educa- tional program run by a nonprofit organi- zation called Farms For City Kids, which owns the farm and uses it as a means of giv- ing fifth- and sixth-grade students, mostly from the New York City and Boston metro- politan areas, the chance to come to the farm with their teachers for a hands-on ex- perience in rural life. The farm started making cheese in 2008, according to Stephenson, to teach the youngsters more about farm life and to provide additional financial support for the organization, which has provided programming for about 12,000 students over the years. "For us, working in sym- biosis with the farm, the cows, the community," said Cristi Menard, who manages sales and marketing for Spring Brook Farm, "It's very inspiring for me to be part of that." Mateo Kehler, the cheese- maker for Cellars at Jasper Hill, noted that the three cheeses that won this year's awards are all farmstead cheeses, which means that they're made at the same farms where the animals that produced the milk are raised. "The awards actually re- flect a level of quality that is not possible to obtain if you're not connected to the farms," he said. The particular wheel of Tarentaise that was judged for the contest was made on July 8, 2015 with raw milk from Jersey cows grazing on early summer's lush grass, with results in cheeses with floral notes that don't come out at other times of the year. "Those months are exceptional in terms of the overall flavor and balance," Stephenson said. Just 12 wheels were made on that date, according to Stephenson, and while it was too early then to know for sure that this wheel was eventually going to be worthy of competing with the best of the best, the cheesemakers were optimistic. "We have some idea of what we're going to get," Stephenson said. "We taste every make. We have records of that batch." The Tarentaise Reserve that finds its way into cheese cases around the country after this win won't come from this wheel – or SAMUEL KENNEDY AND MATTHEW HETTLINGER THE FARM AT DOE RUN JEREMY STEPHENSON SPRING BROOK FARM CHEESE

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