Cheese competitions this year have had to solve a problem none of them planned for: how do you judge a wheel you can't put your hands on together, in the same room, at the same table? Several well-known industry competitions moved their judging online this year, either as a live-streamed panel working from samples shipped to each judge individually or as a fully remote scoring process built around video and written notes. We've fielded enough questions from members holding our Competition Judge Accreditation about how that changes the job that it's worth walking through plainly.
What doesn't change
The credential itself is built around a judge's ability to apply a consistent scoring rubric — appearance, texture, aroma, flavor, finish — the same way across every entry in a category, regardless of who made it or where it's from. That discipline doesn't depend on being in a physical room. A judge who scores generously on the entries she tastes first and more critically as fatigue sets in has the same problem whether she's at a table with six other judges or alone at her kitchen counter working through a shipped flight of samples. The fundamentals the credential tests — rubric consistency, defect identification, calibration against reference examples — are exactly as relevant on a screen as off one.
What gets harder, and how competitions are handling it
Two things suffer in a remote format, and it's worth naming them rather than pretending a video call replaces a table. The first is texture and mouthfeel comparison across entries — judging six wheels side by side, switching between them to compare a paste's give or a rind's snap, is much slower and less reliable when each judge is working alone with their own shipped samples on their own schedule. The second is judge calibration itself. Part of what keeps a panel's scores consistent is a quiet conversation at the table — "does everyone else taste that much bitterness in the finish, or is it just me" — that a chat window or a follow-up email thread captures only partially.
Competitions running remote judging this year have mostly addressed this by front-loading calibration: a live video session where the panel tastes a shared reference sample together before individual scoring begins, specifically so judges have a recent, shared baseline before working solo. If you're judging remotely for the first time this season, ask the organizer whether a calibration session is built in, and push for one if it isn't.
If a competition invites you to judge remotely this year, the credential still qualifies you, and the core skill set transfers. Budget more time per entry than you would at a table — you're doing solo work that used to be shared — and take more written notes than usual, since you can't lean on a fellow judge's read to check your own. Our Sensory Evaluation Certificate course, which many judges take alongside the accreditation, has added a short module this quarter specifically on scoring from shipped or photographed samples, and it's a reasonable refresher even for judges who've held the credential for years.
If you're weighing whether to accept a remote judging invitation for the first time, the Awards & Competition Committee has talked through the format with several members already this year and can tell you what to expect before you commit.
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.