* *
- At Masters Gallery Foods in Plymouth,
Sandy Toney is the vice president,
or big cheese,
of corporate quality and development.
[phone rings]
- Hey Jake.
I started at Masters in 1989 and then I was in quality.
And after a while in quality,
I decided I wanted to move on to the grading.
At that point
the gentleman who took me under his wing
was going to retire.
So I started in the grading department,
and I just... I loved it.
- Grading means tasting cheese from dairy producers every day.
- It's not as creamy either.
You're evaluating the product
to see if you can run it in your facility, basically.
- It s a cheese lover s dream.
* *
- It's a pleasant flavor.
- Sandy s skills come in handy here
at the Biannual U.S. Cheese Championship.
It s the American "Super Bowl" of cheese.
So it s appropriate
that the 2017 event took place at Lambeau Field.
Sandy s been a cheese competition judge since 2007.
- I think a good cheese judge has to have an open mind.
They have to have
extreme knowledge of the cheesemaking.
- Twisted, braided, a little everything.
- They have to be able to make a decision.
- That s because there are more than 2,000 entries
competing for the title of United States Cheese Champion.
Judges have to taste dozens of samples over two days.
- If you're a good judge, you can do 60, 70 samples
and you can pick the winner out of those, easily.
* *
- So what makes a championship cheese?
- It's good.
It cleans up in your mouth.
You have no off flavors.
It melts perfectly.
There's no bitterness.
I want a balance between all these flavors.
And then at the end, I want it to clean up.
And that's the key,
where you don't have any aftertaste in your mouth.
The key to every cheese
is balance and cleaning up once you spit the product out.
- Regular judges wear white hats,
but a select group of distinguished chief judges
get to wear red hats.
In 2014, Sandy got the call.
- One day I got a phone call
and they asked me if I would join the "red hats."
And it was an honor.
It was exciting.
How do you say no to that?
- Sandy s the first woman to ever wear a red hat.
She serves as an assistant chief judge
for both the U.S. and World Cheese Championships.
She advises the other judges
and makes sure the competition runs smoothly.
- Pepper.
- High heat.
Good luck.
- I found out really fast
that judging is a breeze compared to being a "red hat."
It's exhausting.
[chuckles]
Let me get you set up.
It's... you work. Yeah.
- Sandy spends so much time around cheese,
it d be easy to get bored with Brie,
sick of Swiss,
or even fed up with Feta.
That s not the case.
- No.
In fact, when I go on vacation,
I buy cheese,
because I have to have it every day.
They say there's an addictive thing to it,
and I agree, there is.
I eat it every day.
- Spoken like a true Wisconsinite.
Sandy's proud to play her part
in one of the cheese industry's biggest events.
The 2017 U.S. Champion came from where else
Wisconsin.
- When they hold up the championship cheese
and the feeling that it expels
from these people to walk up there
and win out of 2,303 samples, they're the best.
It's a great feeling.
And it's fun.