Why Seven Different Cheeses Won Gold in Blue at ACS This Year

This year's American Cheese Society competition handed out gold medals to seven different blue cheeses. That's not a fluke, and it's not grade inflation — it's just how ACS judging works.

The competition doesn't judge "blue cheese" as one category. Blue Mold Cheeses split into five subcategories, based on milk type and whether the rind has a coating, and each subcategory gets its own 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. Two of them ended in a tie this year, which is how you end up with seven golds instead of five. Ties aren't a workaround — if two entries land on identical scores within the same subcategory, both take the top spot.

Here's the breakdown:

• Rindless, cow's milk: Point Reyes Original Blue, from Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Co. in California.
• Rindless, goat/sheep/mixed milk: a tie between Bountiful Blue and Ewe're My Boy Blue, both out of Kingston Cheese Cooperative in Wisconsin.
• Rinded, cow's milk: another tie, Mad River Blue (von Trapp Farmstead) and Madison Blue (Green Mountain Blue Cheese), both Vermont.
• Rinded, goat/sheep/mixed milk: An Old Blue Named Sue, from Maple Leaf Cheesemakers.
• External blue-molded, any milk: Deep Ellum Blue, from Mozzarella Company in Texas.

ACS runs well over 100 categories most years, and hands out hundreds of medals total across them. Blue just happens to be a crowded, competitive style with a lot of ways to make it — cow versus goat, rind versus none, coated versus bare. Seven golds doesn't mean the bar was low. It means seven different creameries nailed seven different definitions of blue.

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The 7 Gold Medal Winners

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