Swiss Cheese Awards judge 1,000 cheeses in Fribourg
Fribourg is judging nearly 1,000 cheeses this week across 33 categories, with a Super Jury naming three Swiss Champions before Friday's Awards Night.
The 14th Swiss Cheese Awards are under way in Fribourg this week, where close to 1,000 cheeses split across 33 categories face one of Europe's largest dairy juries.
The Swiss Cheese Awards run from 6 to 11 October. A qualifying round opened the competition on 6 October, when around 200 international experts tasted and scored every entry, category by category, until each of the 33 classes had a winner.
Inside the Swiss Cheese Awards jury
Three Swiss Champions beat a thousand entrants to it; the arithmetic alone explains the tension.
On 8 October, those 33 category winners go back in front of judges a second time. This round is smaller and more senior: a Super Jury tastes only the winners and picks three Swiss Champions, one each for Extra-Hard/Hard, Semi-Hard and Soft/Fresh cheese. Three titles out of a thousand entries makes the Swiss Champion label one of the tightest in European cheese judging.
All 33 category winners and the three Swiss Champions are named together at Awards Night on 9 October. The Swiss Cheese Awards are a national contest, distinct from the World Cheese Awards, a global judging that closed its own entry list last month.
The public gets a role too. On 9 October, Fribourg hosts a cheeseboard-composition competition at L'Atelier, open for anyone to watch the entrants assemble their boards. It runs alongside the results announcement rather than after it, so visitors can see two contests settled on the same day.
Fribourg's own stake in the contest
Fribourg is not a neutral host. The canton makes two of Switzerland's defining cheeses: Vacherin Fribourgeois AOP and Gruyère AOP, both carrying protected-origin status. Together they go into fondue moitié-moitié, the region's half-and-half fondue and the reason most visitors already know the local cheese before they arrive for the judging.
Dairy regions elsewhere run comparable contests on their own calendars. Wisconsin's cheesemakers handed out their own impact awards earlier this year, though theirs reward community work rather than flavor.
A traditional cheese market follows the judging, open in Fribourg's Bourg district on Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 October. The winning cheeses go on sale there alongside other regional specialties, with activities for children running through both days.
