Gold, silver, bronze, and a very deep field

Members are home from Madison and, judging by the inbox, most of you want one thing first: the results. The closing session and awards presentation wrapped the ICF Annual Conference last Thursday, and the general session did in fact run cold, exactly as warned, which was a relief given how the week outside had gone.

The medal table

Aged Cheddar & Territorials went to a clothbound entry with a full year in the cave behind it, taking gold on the strength of a tight, even paste and a rind judges singled out for consistency across the whole wheel — no easy thing at that size. Fresh & Pasta Filata's top spot went to a blue that judges praised for balance rather than punch, which one panelist called "the kind of blue that convinces someone who says they don't like blue." Washed Rind's winner was a clothbound washed cheese that held its funk in check without losing it entirely, a needle affinage doesn't always thread cleanly — the kind of result that comes from a maker reading their cave's humidity as closely as their wash schedule, not just following a fixed routine week to week.

Silver and bronze were spread wide this year across Alpine Styles and Aged Cheddar & Territorials in particular, both categories judges described as unusually tight at the top, with several entries separated by fractions of a point on the scoresheet rather than a clear gap. That's a good problem for the competition to have, and a hard one for the judging panel, who told us afterward they re-tasted two full flights before finalizing placements.

Soft-Ripened, which we flagged after day one as the deepest field in recent memory, held that reputation through the final scoring. Judges asked for extra time just to get through the category properly, and no entry there took a medal this year. That surprised a few people in the room, but the consensus among judges wasn't that the cheeses were weak — it was that the field itself set an unusually high bar, and several strong entries landed just short of each other rather than short of the standard. If you entered and didn't place, that distinction is worth sitting with before you rework your recipe.

Getting home, and what comes next

The heat that sat over the Midwest through the middle of the week didn't help anyone's travel plans; excessive heat warnings covered a wide stretch of the region during the exact days the conference was running, and more than one member told us their drive home took longer than expected because of it. If you're still unpacking a cooler that spent extra hours on the road, give your entry cheeses a careful look before you put them back in your own cave — heat stress in transit can show up a few days later as a rind problem that has nothing to do with your usual routine.

On the programming side, the Education Committee is turning the Tuesday trade panel into a members-only recap webinar this summer, and several workshop presenters — including the washed-rind and affinage clinic leads — have agreed to run their sessions again online this fall for anyone who couldn't make the trip. Watch your inbox for dates.

Thank you to everyone who traveled to Madison in what's shaping up to be one of the hottest Julys on record, and to everyone who submitted an entry, medal or not. The Awards & Competition Committee reads every judge's notes, not just the scoresheets, and if you'd like feedback on your entry beyond the printed result, reach out and we'll get you what the judges wrote.

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The International Cheese Federation (ICF) and More Cheese are entirely fictional. This post is demonstration content created for MemberJunction. All people, organizations, events, courses, certifications, figures, and quotations in it are invented, and nothing here represents a real association, a real business, a real person, or real professional advice.