6 Highlights from ACS Conference 2024

Rainbow mongers James Presley, Cin Duran, Gordon Edgar

Along with over 1000 other cheese professionals, I gather every year for one of the best places for advanced cheese education anywhere in the United States. When I tell people – at the dog park, at punk shows, at work – that I am heading to a cheese conference they get all sorts of ideas. They think I will be eating cheese all day, pairing it with local drinks, schmoozing with cheesemakers, that kind of thing. I really hate to tell them that they are actually right. That is what I did last week at the 41st American Cheese Society (ACS) Conference in Buffalo, New York.

Here are my top takeaways:

OMG Canadians!

Raclette de Compton au Poivre photo credit ACS & Valerie Tobias Photography

I judged the ACS competition this year and even though I have been a judge double-digits amount of times, I don’t know that I ever had a harder decision. There were about fifteen cheeses I considered for best of show. But there was just a certain buzz around the winner, Raclette de Compton au Poivre, a raclette–style cheese from Fromagerie la Station of Compton, Québec, even among a field of judges who are among the 32 least likely people in the Americas to decide a flavor-added cheese was the Best of Show. But this was a perfect raclette and the pink peppercorns just amplfy the length of flavors: buttery, earthy, grassy, dank, rich and spicy – along with bonus texture.

The runner-up Best of Show, Le Cousin, from Fromagerie Médard of Saint-Gédéon, Québec, was just pretty much the most perfect soft-ripened, washed rind cheese I have had in a long time. Now, don’t get me wrong. In my life and over the counter sometimes the right thing is NOT a perfect washed rind. Sometimes you want one so stinky that the neighbors complain. Sometimes life is so hard that you need to prove you are tough enough to inflict A TEST OF STRENGTH upon yourself, maybe with mustard and rye. This is not that kind of washed rind. This is an incredibly balanced washed rind: strong but the bite is delicate, buttery but not insipid, soft but not limp, and all those good things at once, threatening to maybe be too much—aren’t we all sometimes? -- but never reaching that point. Just perfection. Read more about the 20+ Canadian winners.

Best Unofficial Event

The Cheese Culture Coalition, a nonprofit that “promotes equity and inclusion within the cheese industry through education of the BIPOC community” held a fundraiser at an amazing local restaurant Meat and Eat Charcuterie. The focus of the fun was a Chopped-like, cheese-based, cheese plate competition. There was shouting, singing, friendly mocking and amazing food. The competition was so close that the judges had to barricade themselves in the back room to come to a conclusion. Alisha Norris Jones just edged out Kain Marzalado by pan-frying a wedge of Blakesville St. Germain as an ingredient in her final bite. Izzie Campos took third. Read more about Blakesville and head cheesemaker Veronica Pedraza.

SO MUCH INFORMATION

Here are just a few of the panel discussions at the conference: “Reducing GHG Emissions on the Dairy Farm. Project Reviews, Costs and Funding Opportunities,” “Mongering for Makers and Making for Mongers,” “TASTING SESSION - Canadian Cheese: Coast to Coast,” “Prevention of Cheese Defects with Nisin-Producing Cultures,” “Cultivating Community: Inclusive Employment Practices for a Multilingual Workplace,” “Co-operation: The Socio Economics and Resiliency of the Cooperative Business Models,” “TASTING SESSION - Hidden Gems of the Northeast - Cheese and Stories from Small Makers,” “Cheese & Climate Change: Reimagining American Dairy to Mitigate Impacts, Build Resilience, and Pursue Real Solutions,” “Cheese Defects, Causes and Preventive Measures.” If at least half of those don’t interest you, why are you even reading Cheese Professor?

Latin American Cheese

The last event of any conference is often half full, people having left back for home, stealing a little unapproved vacation, or just too hungover to make it to the last day of events. The last day of ACS, by contrast, has become a not-to-be-missed event and the organizers outdid themselves this year with a trio of folks representing cheeses from Mexico, Brazil, and Columbia. After 41 American Cheese Society conferences, we are finally seeing how big and diverse our cheese community really is.

All the speakers – Georgina Yescas Angeles, John Braga, Alejandro Gomez –and their bites were amazing, but pouring hot chocolate on top of Buf water buffalo mozzarella? I have worked in cheese thirty years, never thought about it and certainly never knew how good it would be. Tell you what, you’ll never go back to Swiss Miss. Read more about Buf and about Lactography.

Meet the Maker

Outside of the educational panels, Meet the Maker is the most important professional event of the weekend. Over 100 producers are there sampling out their newest and favorite cheeses. Most producers had at least four cheeses on their table so if you do a little math, you can see how overwhelming it can be. A professional must actually plan ahead for this! For example, I have a rule to never taste cheese I already know. There are just too many!

My favorite new (to me) cheeses: Queso Navarro’s Panela (silky and milky), High Lawn Dairy’s Siegfried’s Pride (big and unafraid), and Redhead Creamery’s The Barbarian (an American Tete de Moine!) Read more about Redhead Creamery and owner and cheesemaker Alise Sjostrom.

Endangered Cheeses

I was on a panel and I am so proud to be able to introduce two cheeses to professionals who had mostly never tried them before. This panel, which Rachel Fritz Schaal of Parish Hill Creamery designed to highlight how fragile the existence of many of our best American cheeses can be. Brian Civitello from Mystic Cheese in Connecticut talked about his attempt to recreate Pineapple cheese, a very popular high-end cheese of its day. “It’s day” of course was in the late 1800s. Once it was celebrated, now it’s forgotten outside a dozen or so extremely geeky cheese people. (Note: I am one of those people.)

I got to present two California classics: Matos St. Jorge, a Portuguese-style cheese made in Santa Rosa by a 7th generation cheesemaker, Joe Matos. Started in California in 1979 this was made for Portuguese immigrants and now – because Portugal had modernized – may be more traditional that the Sao Jorge still made in the Azores. They only make, at most, 3500 lbs. of this firm, fruity, bite-y cheese a month.

And then there’s the best cheese in the world: Franklin’s Teleme. Now, I write that as a Northern Californian, so I don’t claim to be unbiased. In fact, a few days before the conference I had some self-doubt. Since Teleme came back after a three-and-a-half-year absence, I have rallied people to support this cheese. Maybe I had oversold it due to my personal preferences and NorCal pride?

I watched the room after the talk was done and the audience stood up to leave. Judging by my view from the stage, I had not exaggerated the merits of this stracchino-like, rice-flour-rinded local favorite. Experienced cheese professionals were acting like dumpster-diving crust punks searching for uneaten pieces of Teleme on other people’s plates!

Really, that sums up the best part of the American Cheese Society conferences. We get to hang out with our professional peers and get exposed to an education not available anywhere else. But we also get to just wallow in our love for cheese as eaters too. And that was what brought us to the profession in the first place.