Registration for last week's pairing webinar filled up faster than any session we've run this winter, and the waitlist ran longer than the seat count. Now that the recording is up on the member portal, we wanted to look past the sign-up numbers and ask what attendees actually did with the session once the call ended, rather than just how many of them showed up.
The lesson that traveled best
The most common thing members mentioned wasn't a specific pairing — it was pacing. The session built in scheduled tasting pauses with microphones off so people could actually taste before talking, and more than one attendee told us they've started using the same structure for their own in-shop tastings, virtual or not. A rushed tasting flight teaches people to swallow and move on; a paced one teaches them to notice what actually changed between the first sip and the last, which is the whole point of putting a cheese and a drink next to each other in the first place.
A retailer member who joined from behind her own counter said the format also forced her to write a tighter tasting note than she normally would, because a screen gives you one shot to make the words carry the flavor a customer standing at the case would just smell for themselves. She's kept using those shorter, punchier notes on her case cards since, and says customers read them more than the longer ones she used to write.
An apprentice cheesemaker who joined from a shared kitchen said the biggest surprise wasn't the cheese at all — it was hearing how differently members described the same rind depending on where they were tasting it from, humidity and room temperature included. That's a detail that's easy to lose in a room where everyone is standing at the same table breathing the same air.
Where the format still struggles
Not everything translated. A few members flagged the same problem retailers have run into all winter: shipping the tasting box itself. Cheese that traveled well in a cooler bag across town didn't always arrive in the same condition further out, and at least two participants ended up tasting a warmer or softer wheel than the one on the presenter's table. That's a real limit of a virtual pairing session that a room doesn't have, and it's part of why we're not treating this format as a permanent stand-in for the real thing.
We're already sketching a spring session built around younger, fresh cheeses rather than aged ones, partly because they travel a little more forgivingly than a rind-heavy lineup in transit. If you want your creamery or cider house considered for that lineup, or if you have feedback on this month's session, the Events Committee is collecting notes through the end of the month.
It's worth saying plainly that none of this happens in a vacuum. Trade coverage this winter has been full of ingredient startups and sustainability pilots elsewhere in the dairy business, which is a reminder that the format we're refining here — a small, well-run virtual room — is a modest thing next to what larger players are experimenting with. That's fine. Members have told us they'd rather have three good pairing sessions a year than a flashy platform they never quite trust, and we're building toward the former.
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.