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lightning 10 The Cheese Guide BY LORRIE BAUMANN The morning after Tarentaise Reserve was announced as the first- place winner in the best of show category at the American Cheese Society Judging and Competition, Spring Brook Farm Cheese Program Director Jeremy Stephenson was wearing his purple ribbon around his neck as a medallion. Tarentaise Reserve also won the best of show category in 2014. This year's second-place award in the best of show category went to The Farm at Doe Run's St. Malachi. St. Malachi Reserve 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 companies. They were judged by 22 pairs of judges, with one judge from each two-person team scoring the cheese on its aesthetic values and the other judging on technical 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 tasting, 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 provided by the Spring Brook Farm's herd of Jersey cows, which are part of an educational program run by a nonprofit organization called Farms For City Kids, which owns the farm and uses it as a means of giving fifth- and sixth-grade students, mostly from the New York City and Boston metropolitan areas, the chance to come to the farm with their teachers for a hands-on experience 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 symbiosis 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 cheesemaker 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 reflect 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 even from this batch, since the wheels that weren't set aside for the competition have long since been sold, and most likely, already consumed. "When you have a cheese that's aged for two years, to have this incredible honor is a challenge," Menard said in recognition of the difficulties of supplying the market with a cheese that's suddenly 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 Reserve they can find at their local cheese shops will still be an exceptional experience, 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." for Tarentaise Reserve Jeremy Stephenson

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