Cheese judging: Competition stiff behind the wheel
11:40 PM 3/16/04
Jason Stein Wisconsin State Journal

Semitrailer loads of cheese and butter have been rolled into Monona Terrace for this week's international cheese competition, ending a journey that took hundreds of foreign entries into the bellies of airplanes, past biosecurity red tape and into the mouths of judges. <

Cheese and butter makers from Wisconsin and around the globe spent thousands to ship their products to the World Championship Cheese Contest in hopes of a gold medal and a better hold on the American market. <

Swiss dairies paid at least $5,000 to ship more than 40 entries by airplane, said contest judge Anton Schmutz, head of the Swiss Specialist Cheese Makers. Just his group's 10 Swiss cheese entries together weighed around a ton. <

To get the entries to Madison, Swiss producers had to arrange for refrigerated air freight containers, struggle through customs paperwork and make sure their dairies were certified under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's new biosecurity guidelines. <

But the Swiss do well in the contest and the effort and expense is worth it, Schmutz said. <

"It's always important to do it," Schmutz said in French as he looked in dismay over a Swiss raclette that had been mashed in shipping. "It can always help to find a buyer in the United States." <

Packaging judge Stephen Corradini, who handles the cheese section at Whole Foods Market in Madison, said awards draw customers' interest. Sales of Pleasant Ridge Reserve, from Upland Cheese Co. in Dodgeville, increased "several-fold" after it won medals in contests like the World Championship's smear-ripened cheese category, Corradini said. <

The cheese and butter entries at this year's World Championship arrived in two full semitrailers that were kept at 40 degrees. A team of some two dozen handlers kept busy all day hauling wooden pallets of cheese up to the contest area, unwrapping the cheeses and sealing them again with a waxy mixture once the judges were done sampling them. <

Master cheese maker Steve Stettler knows this week's World Championship Cheese Contest in Madison is a time to expect anything, even a cheese-napping. <

After the last contest in 2002, Stettler bought a 200-pound wheel of Swiss cheese to take back to his Decatur Dairy in Brodhead. But fellow cheese makers had other ideas. <

"It disappeared - everything got to Monroe except my wheel," said Stettler, who's won past contest awards for his dairy's Muenster and Havarti. <

The contest's self-described "official toter" Steve Krause admitted loading Stettler's Swiss wheel into a dark-colored Chevy Suburban in 2002. "That's all I can tell you," Krause said. <

For a month or more, Stettler followed "sightings" of his Swiss wheel - Internet photos posted on a Web site that the cheese-nappers named after Decatur Dairy. "There were threats that I would get it back in half-pound pieces," Stettler said. <

In the end, the wheel showed up at Stettler's dairy as mysteriously as it disappeard. <

"I'm still eating it - and I haven't shared any with my good friends either," Stettler said. <

Contact Jason Stein at jstein@madison.com or 252-6154.