If The Moon Were Made of Swiss

At last, some news worth reporting.

MADISON, Wis. - It was all in the cheese's eyes. An emmentaler Swiss cheese crafted in Switzerland with near perfect distribution of the holes that make the cheese famous took top honors Thursday at the World Championship Cheese Contest.

I can't sink my teeth into Swiss Cheese winning an international taste test. Were all cheeses fairly represented? What about French goat cheese? You know. The impossibly large cheese wheel you can buy only in towns around the Pyrenees?

Johnson said judges deduct points if flavors are not in balance or a cheese does not smell right. Having an overpowering horse blanket taste is a typical problem. Johnson described it as "sweaty, barny, unclear."

I can see how an overpowering horse blanket taste would put a damper on my wine and cheese event. But so could this sentence:

Judges can take several minutes with each cheese in the early rounds, grading for presentation, texture, smell and taste. They swirl the samples in their mouths like fine wine, trying to pull out the characteristics before spitting out a mouthful of cheese into a garbage can.