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Cheese Conference: float like a butterfly
Aug. 18th, 2006 07:00 am"Cheese in the Media" was the next morning’s panel discussion and featured a multi-media presentation by Christine Hyatt/ "The Cheese Chick" which featured, among other things, the history of cheese advertising in the USA and video clips like the one from The Daily Show" about the government crackdown on bathtub cheese. Basically, the theme was: "Cheese is a hot trend".
It wasn’t really the panelists’ fault, but it highlighted one of the faults of this year’s conference. At 800 people of all skill and knowledge levels, it is really hard to program a general session that is interesting to old timers and not too obscure for newcomers. There certainly were handy tips for folks who’d never thought about how to present themselves to the media, and the clips were fun and well-chosen, but it felt fairly obvious to me. At an hour and fifteen minutes, it was too long for that.
Unfortunately, my next panel, "Who Killed My Cheese" also felt that way. Covering the handling of cheese from the dairy to the retail floor, the panelists were all people I respect.** I may have just chosen poorly since I’ve been to this type of panel before, but I’m a sucker for stories of bad handling and cheese disaster . Some topics unfortunately seemed to be untouchable, like what happens when a distributor buys at the behest of a large company who then doesn’t take half the order? At what level of buying power is a company too big for you to call them on their bad behavior? Of course, no one officially wants to sell cheese in distress, but then why does so much get sold? When do folks pull the plug and dumpster it and how far are they willing to push it?
My favorite part was when the French national on the panel talked about cheese sitting out on display and getting oily. One has to factor in the amount of lost weight and flavor in this situation and calculate pricing for (literal) shrink. He has a fairly heavy accent so after he bemoaned the loss![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dairryiere elbowed me and said, "Did he just say that cheese losing moisture is like a butterfly escaping?"
"No he said it was butterfat escaping"
"Oh, but that was so poetic."
I discovered a new pet peeve at this conference. People not using their microphones. The conference organizers, in a well-planned attempt to deal with the unexpected size of the conference, had carefully set up the rooms so that audience members could be heard. However, many attendees just couldn’t be bothered. I was in the very back row at this panel and after the third or fourth person asked a question without using the mic I was fed up. Someone started to share a long anecdote while standing five feet from the microphone . I can be quite loud so I used my volume privilege and yelled in my butchest voice, "If you want us to hear you, you have to use the microphone."
The person sat down in embarrassment and didn’t finish her story. But then immediately afterwards, someone else stood up, announced, "I’m loud enough" and started another long story of maintaining cheese integrity. I had broken the ice and others started shouting at her. I didn’t mean to unleash all that so I just said, loud enough for the back couple of rows, "it’s OK, we’ll just talk amongst ourselves until you’re done."
The California cheese tasting was next and it made me proud. I’d tasted almost everything before of course, except for the new Fiscalini Cheese . It was excellent but I was warned that it will be younger on the retail level, so I am hesitant to describe it in public yet. Also excellent was the new
Sierra Nevada Cheese Company organic vat-cultured butter. They already make the absolute best cream cheese available in the USA and this butter is right up there with Vermont Butter and Cheese Company in terms of flavor.
The aged, raw milk Bellwether Carmody , a cheese I always like, was at its absolute best that day too. Milky and tangy with a bite you don’t always get. Marin French * represented well, not only with their soft-ripened cheese but with Schloss, a smeared-rind rectangle of stink and fat that, you heard it here first, is the most underrated cheese in the whole country.
*Oldest continually operating cheese plant in the country. Don’t believe those Vermonters who say different.
**One panelist referred to my sales rep who she entrusts with "her babies", a.k.a. the specialty cheese she imports . She went on in great detail about how my rep goes into the warehouse weekly and touches and examines the cheese. This of course lead to me now calling my rep up to place my order and starting off our conversation disguising my voice and saying, "I know you touched the babies."
It wasn’t really the panelists’ fault, but it highlighted one of the faults of this year’s conference. At 800 people of all skill and knowledge levels, it is really hard to program a general session that is interesting to old timers and not too obscure for newcomers. There certainly were handy tips for folks who’d never thought about how to present themselves to the media, and the clips were fun and well-chosen, but it felt fairly obvious to me. At an hour and fifteen minutes, it was too long for that.
Unfortunately, my next panel, "Who Killed My Cheese" also felt that way. Covering the handling of cheese from the dairy to the retail floor, the panelists were all people I respect.** I may have just chosen poorly since I’ve been to this type of panel before, but I’m a sucker for stories of bad handling and cheese disaster . Some topics unfortunately seemed to be untouchable, like what happens when a distributor buys at the behest of a large company who then doesn’t take half the order? At what level of buying power is a company too big for you to call them on their bad behavior? Of course, no one officially wants to sell cheese in distress, but then why does so much get sold? When do folks pull the plug and dumpster it and how far are they willing to push it?
My favorite part was when the French national on the panel talked about cheese sitting out on display and getting oily. One has to factor in the amount of lost weight and flavor in this situation and calculate pricing for (literal) shrink. He has a fairly heavy accent so after he bemoaned the loss
dairryiere elbowed me and said, "Did he just say that cheese losing moisture is like a butterfly escaping?""No he said it was butterfat escaping"
"Oh, but that was so poetic."
I discovered a new pet peeve at this conference. People not using their microphones. The conference organizers, in a well-planned attempt to deal with the unexpected size of the conference, had carefully set up the rooms so that audience members could be heard. However, many attendees just couldn’t be bothered. I was in the very back row at this panel and after the third or fourth person asked a question without using the mic I was fed up. Someone started to share a long anecdote while standing five feet from the microphone . I can be quite loud so I used my volume privilege and yelled in my butchest voice, "If you want us to hear you, you have to use the microphone."
The person sat down in embarrassment and didn’t finish her story. But then immediately afterwards, someone else stood up, announced, "I’m loud enough" and started another long story of maintaining cheese integrity. I had broken the ice and others started shouting at her. I didn’t mean to unleash all that so I just said, loud enough for the back couple of rows, "it’s OK, we’ll just talk amongst ourselves until you’re done."
The California cheese tasting was next and it made me proud. I’d tasted almost everything before of course, except for the new Fiscalini Cheese . It was excellent but I was warned that it will be younger on the retail level, so I am hesitant to describe it in public yet. Also excellent was the new
Sierra Nevada Cheese Company organic vat-cultured butter. They already make the absolute best cream cheese available in the USA and this butter is right up there with Vermont Butter and Cheese Company in terms of flavor.
The aged, raw milk Bellwether Carmody , a cheese I always like, was at its absolute best that day too. Milky and tangy with a bite you don’t always get. Marin French * represented well, not only with their soft-ripened cheese but with Schloss, a smeared-rind rectangle of stink and fat that, you heard it here first, is the most underrated cheese in the whole country.
*Oldest continually operating cheese plant in the country. Don’t believe those Vermonters who say different.
**One panelist referred to my sales rep who she entrusts with "her babies", a.k.a. the specialty cheese she imports . She went on in great detail about how my rep goes into the warehouse weekly and touches and examines the cheese. This of course lead to me now calling my rep up to place my order and starting off our conversation disguising my voice and saying, "I know you touched the babies."
