How Mongers Learn about Cheese | The Cheese Professor

Rachel Pineda has learned a lot about cheese. She jumped in with both feet in 2001, when she and her husband opened Otto’s Cheese Shop outside San Antonio, Texas. This year alone Pineda became an ACS Certified Cheese Professional™ and a Cheese State University Cheese Scholar. If she had entered the cheese business just 15 years ago, neither of those resources would have been available to her. Now she is among thousands of cheesemongers and sales representatives taking advantage of formal education and certification opportunities that were nowhere to be found when their veteran colleagues first entered the industry. Learn about the Certified Cheese Professional ™certification.

Cheese State University

Pineda is among nearly 3000 cheese professionals who are currently enrolled in the Cheese State University program launched in January of 2023 and funded by Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin. The program took a couple of years to develop, and it is largely the brainchild of Molly Browne, an industry veteran hired as director of education for Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin in 2019. It utilizes an online/mobile app platform that mimics the trappings of a brick-and-mortar college experience, but more importantly, is rich in learning resources drawn from industry experts and organizations in and beyond Wisconsin.

“I totally would recommend CSU to anyone in the industry,” Pineda says. “It’s a valuable resource to help your understanding of cheese from farm to table.” She has recommended it for her newest hires at Otto’s.

Certified Cheese Professional

Since 2012, the American Cheese Society has offered its Certified Cheese Professional™ program to those who have worked full time in the industry for at least two years. More than 1200 individuals have achieved that certification by passing a 150-question exam. Many of those ACS CCP™s spent months studying for the exam on their own, or with informal groups, while others, especially those working for larger companies, were able to take advantage of a more structured course of preparation offered by their employers. Read more about how to become a Certified Cheese Professional™.

By the time the CCP™ was being offered there were numerous blogs and newsletters focused on cheese knowledge, including Cheese Underground and the Cheese Science Toolkit. Social media had become a double-edged sword, with lots of collaborative study groups, but also some noticeable inaccuracies being shared on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere.

The CCP™ certification was intended to help bring a level of professionalism to the fledgling North American artisan cheese industry, which by most accounts was in its infancy in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Programs in Harmony

Susan Sturman, a veteran cheese educator, led the creation of the CCP™ after a presentation of the idea at the American Society Conference in 2003. Industry-wide surveys indicated that no program of the kind existed, and that most training was done on the job or via independent reading. While the committee considered developing a curriculum and a certification program, it was more feasible to focus on the latter, Sturman says. She now views the CSU offerings, as with other training and prep programs, as being harmonious with the certification program.

“Without the need to pass an exam and earn an independent certification, formal professional development in cheese was not perceived as a priority,” she says. “And without training programs to expand people's expertise and knowledge beyond the scope of their daily work, chances of passing such a wide-ranging exam are much lower.”

Sturman continues to serve on the ACS committee that governs the CCP™ program. The cheese society has also added a Certified Cheese Sensory Evaluation Program™ that is geared toward judges and buyers. She also runs the Mons Formation training program that she helped create in 2012. All courses are offered at Mons Fromager-Affineur’s headquarters in Saint-Haon-le-Châtel, France, where participants work in the caves with Mons professionals.

Browne came into the industry more than ten years ago and has worked for both Jasper Hill Farm and Vermont Creamery.

“When I started as a monger, I was lucky that I had people who were willing to step in and mentor me,” she says in illustrating the need for structured education programs. “Everything I learned basically came from word of mouth, through the oral traditions of cheese industry mentorship. Some people have that, and some don’t. Some people don’t really have access to what they need to thrive. We set out to create a program that was broadly accessible to everybody.”

Tuition

Molly Browne, director of education for Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin photo courtesy Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin

The free-to-industry Wisconsin program may be the horse that now leads the cart. Browne notes that if a retail business pays a new employee an hourly wage to finish the CSU course and take the Cheese State Scholar exam, it could cost less than $300 in wages. Whereas the CCP™, targeted for those who are already knowledgeable and well into their career, carries a registration fee of $500-$650 and possible travel costs to the American Cheese Society Conference, which shifts to different regions each summer. While remote testing is available, and there are scholarships for CCP™ candidates, the online CSU program is available to newcomers who may later seek the CCP™ once they have been on the job for a couple of years.

Certification Prep

Nathan Aldridge is a 20-year industry veteran who heads up the education efforts for Gourmet Foods International (GFI), one of the largest nationwide distributors of cheese and fine foods. He leads educational programs often utilized to prepare for the three-hour-long CCP™ exam. These are mostly available to GFI coworkers and the distributor’s retail customers. Aldridge, who started his cheese career with Murray’s Cheese of New York, and helped shepherd the legendary retailer’s merger with the Kroger Company’s grocery store chains, remembers that all learning was done behind the counter, or with nose-to-book when he started at Murray’s.

App Based Learning & Virtual Socializing

Aldridge believes that CSU’s format will appeal particularly to young people entering the profession and that it is one more way to prepare for the CCP™ program.

“It’s a new day, and you have got to adjust,” he says. “There are shorter attention spans. But this makes it like a game and makes it fun with immediate rewards. That’s absolutely where it has to go.”

The CSU app is loaded with features, beginning with the Field Guide, which contains a core curriculum in three volumes totaling 12 chapters. The Field Guide Assessment is a 30-question test that leads to the CSU certification as a Cheese Scholar. Students must get 24 correct to pass, and if not, they are told which questions they missed before trying it again. Success rate has been around 90%.

The Ann Pickett library offers ancillary training, there is an atlas of Wisconsin cheeses, and a video series, named the Turo Files, which can help the user “instantly answer some of the thorny questions you run into when working behind the counter,” Browne says.

“The really big thing aside from those is The Quad, which is the social networking component. It’s a great space for cheese mongers to socialize without the drama.”

Around the bend, CSU may soon offer a streamlined curriculum tailored for retailers who work mostly with pre-packaged cheese, and a 200 level or Master’s type certification, Browne says.

While these programs offer fast-track preparation, live conferences, and webinars continue to offer continued education, and these include the cheese society conference, and webinars, and Counter Culture seminars presented by CULTURE magazine. Looking for a school where you can learn about cheese? Check out 7 Cheese Schools.