Cheese Judging in Covid Times

 

No Summer Olympics. No James Beard Awards, at least not for chefs. No American Cheese Society conference. Not even a Miss America pageant. We’re becoming so accustomed to events being canceled that’s its noteworthy when they aren’t. When the Good Food Awards Foundation announced that it was moving forward with its annual competition and awards, I was pretty skeptical, because…well…tasting. In groups. But they figured it out. I was a Good Foods Awards cheese judge last weekend and the crazy scheme worked. porcelain kitchen storage cheese holder

For the past 10 years, the Good Food Awards competition has been held in San Francisco in September, with judges convening from all over the country to evaluate cheese, charcuterie, preserves, olive oil, spirits and other edibles. The GFA mission is to celebrate and elevate food and beverage producers with progressive practices, like heightened attention to animal welfare and environmental impact.

“With such immense challenges facing makers around the country, we wondered if organizing the Good Food Awards was the right thing to do,” said co-founder Sarah Weiner in videotaped remarks to the judges. But after surveying producers for input, GFA forged ahead. “We realized that, more than ever, it was critical to direct the public to businesses that were making their communities better,” said Weiner.

Home work: my pod’s assignment

In the end, GFA received even more entries than last year, although the cheese category dipped slightly—from 143 entries last year to 131. Typically, each creamery sends a whole wheel, and the assigned judging team gathers around a table to cut and taste it together, although they score it individually. Clearly, the judges could not gather in person this year, yet each cheese had to be scored by multiple people.

“There was no playbook for this,” admits committee chair manager Jessica Zischke, who collaborated with cheese committee chairs Debra Dickerson of Tomales Bay Foods and Tamara Hicks of Tomales Farmstead Creamery to devise an alternate plan.

They decided that cheese judges would work from home, in four pods with three people each. Creameries entering soft cheeses, impossible to cut in advance, would need to send three whole ones. Firm, cuttable wheels were portioned for the judges by the creamery and vacuum sealed for shipping. Volunteers assembled boxes for each judge—no small feat—and we picked them up at a warehouse in San Francisco the day before the judging.

On the job: GFA tasting

On the appointed day, the dozen cheese judges gathered via Zoom and then split into pods. Each pod blind-tasted about 32 cheeses (my pod had yogurt as well) and evaluated them using scoring software. A pod manager made sure everybody understood the scoring system and kept us on track. Zischke told me in a phone call afterward that GFA had dedicated one team member to resolving Zoom issues and another to trouble-shooting technical hiccups with the scoring. From my vantage point, it ran like Swiss trains.

“There were a lot of challenges in the leadup,” admits Zischke, “but the tasting days felt very smooth.”

To be honest, I missed the camaraderie of gathering in person, floating around to the other tables to snitch a taste of what others are judging, and exchanging industry gossip. But for the GFA staff and volunteers, this was a truly admirable pivot, done for the best reasons—to be sure several American cheesemakers will have a fresh award to brag about in the months to come.