Share Facebook Twitter Google + LinkedIn Pinterest Holmes County is renowned for many things including its rolling hills, quaint dairies, and wealth of Amish traditions. The northeast Ohio county can now add one more highlight to the list — the home of the best cheese in the nation for 2015.A wheel of Swiss cheese made by the careful hands at the Guggisberg Cheese Company, based out of Millersburg, was named the 2015 U.S. Championship Cheese by a national panel of expert judges at the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association’s annual competition held in March. The victorious cheese topped 1,892 entries from 28 states in the largest technical evaluation of cheese in the country.The Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association (WCMA) has held the prestigious competition since 1891. The event has grown to enormous proportions in recent years, having doubled its size since 2001 with over 33,000 pounds of dairy products entered this year alone. The 90 classes of cheese, butter, and yogurt were judged by 32 dairy product-testing experts from 18 states in this year’s competition.The top award this year is particularly significant for Ohio as it is the first time a cheese from the state has won the overall competition. Past years have seen Guggisberg take the top prize in a particular cheese category, but never the top honor.Richard Guggisberg, president of the company, said it is truly an honor in their line of work to be recognized with such a prestigious accolade.Members from the team behind the winning wheel of cheese from left to right is: plant supervisor Tom Beck, R&D manager Cecylia Szewczyk, quality assurance director Jennifer George, and cheese maker Derek Yoder.“We have had a focus on quality. You could say you want to make a quality product in all sincerity, but it takes time to develop that kind of a culture in your business and get that through everybody’s head that this is what our focus is,” Guggisberg said. “This is a reward to everybody in the company.”Guggisberg said that Swiss is widely regarded in the cheese community for being the most difficult to produce and master. The Swiss wheel scored 98.496 points out of a possible 100 in the final round of judging. First runner-up, a brick cheese made by John (Randy) Pitman of Mill Creek Cheese in Arena, Wisconsin, tallied a 98.389 score.“Swiss cheese is a very difficult cheese to make. Not only do you have to get the flavor correct and the texture correct, but you also have to get a beautiful ‘eyes’ or holes and a nice color in there — those things combined is not an easy thing to do,” he said. “It’s pretty well known as the most difficult.”The process of making cheese is not one for the impatient. Several weeks go into the physical work required for making cheese.“We make the cheese in the vats. By the time it becomes a 200-pound block, it takes the whole day basically. It stays in a mold overnight and it ferments and then the next morning we put it into a salt brine for 24 hours. After the salt brine, we vacuum seal it and then it goes through a curing process — a process where we develop the eyes, that takes about six weeks,” he said. “Then it takes another two weeks for the cheese to cool down all the way to the core. The whole process really takes about 60 days.”A devoted and passionate team crafted the winning Swiss cheese. Officially entered as “Team Guggisberg Sugarcreek,” it brought together R&D manager Cecylia Szewczyk, quality assurance director Jennifer George, plant supervisor Tom Beck, and cheese makers Marvin Raber, Norman Yoder and Derek Yoder.George said the important part of their success in the competition was the work as a team.“We have a great team here. Everybody works together for a common goal. The leader on this projectThis cheese is in the process of being made while in the warming room at the Sugarcreek factory.has been Cecylia Szewczyk, she is really excited to be a part of our team and was the key in bringing us to the next level.” George said. “We all played a part in creating the product and picking out the cheese to win for the contest. We are in the process of remodeling our plant and adding on new equipment and it’s just really given everybody the extra support and confidence that we’re headed in the right direction.”The company is made up of three manufacturing facilities — one in Millersburg, the other a few miles down the road in Sugarcreek, and another in Shipshewana, Indiana. The Sugarcreek location produces exclusively Swiss cheese and is undergoing expansion.So what exactly made the Guggisberg Cheese Company champions? It boils down to a variety of carefully controlled factors, as well as a bit of luck.Without giving up too many secrets behind the award-winning recipe and process, George offered some insight into keys of the cheese production.“It’s all about the milk. We have to make sure we have good quality milk and that we have producers we can rely on, and that we can adjust the recipes according to the seasonal changes that are normal in the milk,” she said.Something unique about the cheese they entered for the 2015 competition was its shape. Though the wheel is a more traditional way of crafting cheeses, Guggisberg usually creates their cheeses in block form. The risk paid off.“We had four that we made to choose from. Two of them had a little surface defect and two of them actually looked pretty good. The other two were sent in. The one had a horrible defect — a big crack in it, which makes a major deduction in Swiss cheese,” Guggisberg said. “And the other one, of course, was perfect.”Those aren’t just words from Guggisberg’s mouth. The judges were extremely impressed with the entry, giving it a score of just 1.504 points shy of perfection.“At the award ceremony there was a really great comment. The chief judge there said this was one ofHere is some cheese ready to eat at the Guggisberg headquarters.the best flavors that he has ever tasted. And I thought for a judge at a contest that big in Wisconsin to say that was pretty significant,” Guggisberg said. “The judge said, ‘I don’t see how it could get any better than this.’”The recognition for Guggisberg didn’t stop at the award ceremony. They’ve recently had the chance to meet with Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer at a charity event and talk about the cheese.“Well at least we beat Wisconsin,” Meyer commented to Guggisberg.Like their products, the company has a rich history. Guggisberg is a first-generation American after his father came to the United States from Switzerland. He recalled one of his earliest memories was watching his father flip over cheese in the basement of his childhood home.“My father came here from Switzerland. He was making cheese in Europe before World War II and after World War II he made it in several different countries over there. He was always looking for a challenge,” Guggisberg said. “What they always said was one of the reasons the Swiss came to this area is it’s so similar to Switzerland, and the milk from the hills is a better milk for Swiss cheese.”The company is planning to compete in next year’s World Championship Cheese Contest. The competition alternates between the U.S. Championship and World Championship from year-to-year.“The Swiss are the toughest competitors in the world,” Guggisberg said. “Next year, they do hold the world competition and we’re hoping to give the Swiss a pretty hard run for their money. We’ll see what happens, but we’re going to give it a try anyhow.”Guggisberg enjoys competitions because they help the industry as a whole improve over time.“That’s what’s good about these competitions. It’s not a matter of somebody saying ‘Well I’m much better than you,’ it’s a matter of when you’re at a competition, you push each other to get better,” he said. “What was good enough this year is not going to be good enough next year because there’ll be somebody else trying harder. It’s people pushing each other that makes us all better.” read more