Last Wednesday's in-person workshop in Chicago filled the room we'd booked for it, which is a small but genuine relief after a couple of years of watching in-person turnout be a coin flip. Members came in from three states for a full day on sensory evaluation, and the questions afterward ran long enough that we had to reclaim the room from the venue's next booking.
The workshop is built around the same skills that sit underneath our Sensory Evaluation Certificate and the Competition Judge Accreditation, and this run leaned harder than usual into off-flavor identification — the specific vocabulary for describing a defect precisely enough that two different tasters agree on what they're smelling. That precision matters more than it sounds. "Something's off with this wheel" doesn't help a cheesemaker fix a process step; "a faint ammonia note developing at the rind, likely from over-ripening in a too-warm cave" does.
The part that surprised the room
A few attendees came in expecting a refresher on flavor wheels and left more interested in a shorter segment on how quickly personal palate fatigue sets in during a long tasting flight — and how that fatigue quietly changes scoring even among experienced judges who think they're immune to it. For members who plan to judge at a competition this year, that's worth internalizing before you sit down at a table for six hours: pace your water and neutral crackers, and don't trust your seventh score of the day as much as your third.
There was also real energy around a discussion of regional flavor variation — how the same style of cheese can read differently depending on where the milk came from and what the animals were eating that season, something a few of our members are seeing play out directly as artisan production expands into new regions this year.
If you couldn't make it to Chicago
We know an in-person day in a specific city doesn't work for everyone's calendar or travel budget, and we don't expect it to. If sensory evaluation is a gap for you or your team, the Sensory Foundations course covers the same core vocabulary and structured tasting method at your own pace, and it stacks directly toward the Sensory Evaluation Certificate if you decide to go further. It won't replicate a room full of people arguing about whether a rind smells like mushroom or basement, but it will get you the framework that argument runs on, which is most of what a workshop day actually delivers once the novelty of the room wears off.
A few attendees this round were already partway through that certificate and used the day as a check on their own progress rather than a first exposure — comparing notes on which off-flavors they still find hardest to name under pressure. That mix of first-timers and returners is typical for these workshops, and it's part of why the discussion runs long: someone two years into judging competitions asks a very different question than someone tasting critically for the first time, and both conversations are worth having in the same room.
We're also hearing more interest lately in judging outside the flagship national competition — smaller regional showcases have been adding judged categories as artisan production expands into new areas, and a Competition Judge Accreditation travels with you across all of them, not just the one event it's most associated with. If that's part of your reason for wanting the credential, say so when you inquire; it changes which cohort timing makes sense for you.
If you're weighing whether to pursue Competition Judge Accreditation next year, the Awards & Competition Committee can tell you what the accreditation actually requires and when the next cohort opens — worth a call before you commit a weekend to it. Bring your workshop or course history with you when you ask; it usually shortens the conversation about which prerequisites you've already cleared.
And if Chicago wasn't your city this time, watch the events calendar for the next in-person sensory session. We rotate the workshop across regions specifically so a full day of it doesn't always mean the same flight or the same hotel.
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.