Posted: 03.19.2010

This article courtesy of Barry Adams and the Wisconsin State Journal.  Read all the details at host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/article_ea1884d4-32e0-11df-add7-001cc4c002e0.html

There were no tournament brackets and office pools, nor did callers on talk-radio shows spend days debating the merits of low-fat ricotta, crumbled goat or brie cheese.

The NCAA Tournament may have tipped off Thursday but about an hour after the first basket was made, a gruyere cheese from Switzerland was named the top cheese at the 2010 World Championship Cheese Contest at Monona Terrace.

The cheese, made by Cedric Fragniere of Kirchberg, Switzerland, located east of Zurich, was crowned by a team of international judges who selected from gold medal winners in 79 categories. The first runner-up award went to a team of cheesemakers from Andeer, Switzerland, for a smear-ripened hard cheese, while the second runner-up was awarded to a team from Gmunden, Austria, for its entry in the semi-soft cheeses category.

"It's creamy ... it's very good," Hans Schar, a Swiss judge, said of Fragniere's winning cheese. "He has a nice small factory in the French part of Switzerland. He's a good professional."

The competition featured a record 2,318 entries from 20 countries. The 30 judges came from 12 countries.

Wisconsin cheesemakers received 21 blue ribbons during preliminary judging Tuesday and Wednesday. No other country came close to that number of first-place awards. The Netherlands garnered five, Denmark got four and Switzerland had three.

Wisconsin also blew away the competition from other states. New York had six blue ribbons, two of which were for butter, while Idaho had five, California had four and Vermont had three.

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