Our Workshop: Curd Competition Prep runs in Green Bay on December 19, and if you're planning to put a wheel forward for one of next year's competition categories, this is the last in-person session of the year built specifically for that. Wisconsin closed out its own production year strong, remaining the country's largest cheese-producing state, and December runs typically add a fresh batch of wheels from members timing a make specifically to have something ready for spring judging. It's also been a notably competitive year internationally — an outcome from a major fall competition surprised more than a few longtime entrants, a reminder that category winners aren't always the producers with the biggest name.
That timing is the whole reason the workshop lands in December rather than closer to any actual competition date. A wheel entered in a category like soft-ripened or washed-rind needs weeks of aging behavior to read correctly to a judging panel, and if you're aiming for a spring entry deadline, a cheese made and started into affinage this month is often the last one that will be ready in time. Miss this window and you're choosing between an under-aged entry or skipping the category for a year entirely.
What the workshop actually walks through
The session is built around the same criteria our Awards & Competition Committee trains judges on, not a generic "how to make good cheese" talk. That means rind appearance and uniformity, paste texture at cut, aroma intensity and cleanliness, and how a cheese's flavor develops across the palate rather than just on first taste. Members who've been through it before tell us the most useful part isn't the scoring rubric itself, it's watching an experienced judge cut and evaluate a flight of wheels out loud, because it's the fastest way to learn what a panel is actually listening and tasting for versus what a maker assumes they're being judged on.
If you've never entered a competition before, this is also a low-pressure place to ask basic logistics questions: how entries get shipped and handled before judging, what disqualifies an entry outright regardless of quality, and how categories get assigned when a cheese could plausibly fit more than one. Our Competition Judge Accreditation credential draws on the same body of knowledge, so members thinking about judging in a future year rather than entering will get value out of the session too. A few past attendees have come back the following year as apprentice judges, which the committee is always glad to see; the credential path and the entrant path feed each other more than newcomers usually expect.
If you can't make it to Green Bay
Space in each competition-prep workshop is limited, and this is the only one scheduled before the new year. If Green Bay doesn't work for your schedule, the Awards & Competition Committee can point you to recorded material covering the same judging criteria, and our Judging & Competition Preparation course runs a fuller version of the same material for members who want more than one workshop's worth of practice before they commit to entering. Either way, if a wheel needs to be aging by January to be ready for spring, the decision to enter is really a decision you're making this month, whether or not you've said so out loud yet.
If your make sheet already has a wheel that's been sitting in the back corner of the cave waiting for a reason to get finished properly, this is probably that reason.
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.