Tag: cheese contest

Ellsworth Wins Top Prize at NMPF Dairy Contest; Lanco Pennland Takes Reserve

Posted on by Rachel Ravencraft

A Habanero Ghost Jack from Ellsworth Cooperative Creamery took the top prize in NMPF’s annual cheese and dairy products competition, while Lanco Pennland took the overall Reserve Chairman’s award with its Sweet Cheddar, victories celebrated at the Joint Annual Meeting cheese reception Nov. 12.

Judges noted the high quality of the jack cheese combined with the delicate balance of flavor with the habanero and ghost peppers in giving its top award to Ellsworth for its cheese produced by Team Menomonie of Menomonie, WI. The Sweet Cheddar, produced in Hancock, MD by the team of “Kylie and Ben,” was one of several awards won by Lanco Pennland, which as a new member participated in its first NMPF cheese contest this year.

The annual dairy product contest, commonly called “the cheese contest,” offers NMPF members an opportunity to showcase the top-quality products. Butter was added to the contest in 2024, and yogurt in 2022. Fourteen NMPF cooperative members submitted 240 entries and more than 3,000 pounds of dairy products for this year’s contest.

Contest judges included Allison Reynolds from USDA, Timothy Meyers, College of DuPage, Gina Mode, Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Luis A. Jimenez-Maroto, also with the Center for Dairy Research.

The top prizes, the Chairman’s Award and the Reserve Chairman’s, are decided by judges’ consensus.

In other awards, the best Italian also went to Lanco Pennland for its provolone. The best cottage cheese was awarded to Prairie Farms Dairy, Inc. for its Regular, small curd cottage cheese produced in Carbondale, IL by their Carbondale team. The best butter went to Agri-Mark, Inc. for its Salted 83 butterfat Euro Style Butter made in West Springfield, MA and best yogurt went to Prairie Farms Dairy, Inc. for its vanilla yogurt made in Wichita, KS by its Wichita Culture Team.

A full list of winners is here.

Ellsworth Wins NMPF Dairy Products Competition

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

Ellsworth Cooperative Creamery took top honors in this year’s NMPF Dairy Products Competition, winning the Chairman’s Award with its Garden Vegetable with Sweet Basil Rub from Menomonie, WI.

This year’s annual edition of the contest for member cooperatives featured butter for the first time. The contest included 250 entries from 13 participating NMPF co-ops, a total of more than 3,500 pounds of cheese, yogurt and butter.

The entered products are assessed against scoring standards for cheese, yogurt or butter. NMPF thanks the judges for helping with the contest this year: Allison Reynolds (head judge), USDA, Dairy Grading Branch, Turlock, CA; Timothy Meyers, College of DuPage, Glenn Ellyn, IL; Gina Mode, Center for Dairy Research, University of Wisconsin, Madison; and Chad Galer, Dairy Management Inc., Rosemont, IL.

Ellsworth’s champion cheese was made by Team Menomonie. Upstate Niagara Cooperative won the Reserve Chairman’s Award for its Salted Butter produced in Batavia, NY. Best in Class awards included:

  • Best Cheddar – Mild cheddar from Agri-Mark, Inc., Chateaugay, NY made by Team Chateaugay
  • Best Cottage Cheese – Chive cottage cheese from Dairy Farmers of America, Farmington, MN made by Kemps LLC
  • Best Italian – Provolone Non-Smoked w/ Lipase (Vat #13) from Foremost Farms, Richland Center, WI made by Bryan Allen and the Clayton Team
  • Best Yogurt – 10% Plain Greek Yogurt from Agri‐Mark, Inc., Cabot, VT made by the Cabot Culture Plant

Extra dairy products from the contest were donated to Chefs to End Hunger, which provides meals to the hungry by redistributing the excess prepared food that would normally go to waste in hotels, restaurants, and other food service operations to local charitable organizations to serve the meals.

Dairy Defined Podcast: How NMPF Pulled Off a Virtual Cheese Contest

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted lives and transformed everything from schooling and shopping habits to … cheese contests. It’s not something most people think about, but in a time of social distancing and curtailed travel, how exactly does one gather, sample, compare and celebrate world-class cheeses, virtually?

This was the question National Milk Producers Federation coordinators Jamie Jonker and Miquela Hanselman set out to answer – and their solutions were cheese-tastic, to say the least. Judging conducted from multiple locations, donated storage spaces and smaller cheese blocks played their role – as did continual ingenuity from a team determined not to let a pandemic upend a cherished dairy tradition.

NMPF announced the winners of its first-ever virtual cheese contest – one believed to be the first nationwide U.S. cheese contest of the virtual era – last week. This week’s Dairy Defined Podcast tells the tale of the Cheese Contest That Could, featuring Jonker, Hanselman, and Head Cheese Judge Allison Reynolds of the USDA, facilitated by NMPF Communications Manager Theresa-Sweeney Murphy.

“I think it’s important that while we are in strange and unique times because of the pandemic, that some things still continue to happen as normal course of order,” said Jonker, NMPF’s staff scientist and a 16-year veteran of the competition. “The most rewarding part is that, unless we told people about how we did it, most people wouldn’t understand that it was any different from other years. And I think that’s a testament to the great team that we’ve got at National Milk, our cheese judges, and our co-ops that enter the cheese every year for really making it seem like nothing was different, even though everything was different.”

To listen to the full discussion, click here. You can also find this and other NMPF podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,  SoundCloud and Google Play. Broadcast outlets may use the MP3 file. Please attribute information to NMPF.