SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Have you ever had a bite of cheese that changed your life? Perry Wakeman has.
PERRY WAKEMAN: There's that one moment in life where you try an artisan cheese, and you want to know more about who made it, how it's made. You want to go back to the store, buy it, buy it, buy it again, seek it out, share it with friends.
DETROW: You could say Wakeman is something of a cheese aficionado. He matures cheese for a living in the U.K., and he was one of the top judges at the World Cheese Awards last week in Bern, Switzerland.
(SOUNDBITE OF ALPHORNS PLAYING)
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The festivities began with the blaring sounds of long wooden alphorns as Wakeman and the other judges paraded into the hall in bright yellow aprons.
WAKEMAN: You can see basically a sea of cheese, which is a total of 5,244 cheeses from 46 different countries. And to put that in a visual context, it's about the size of a football field.
DETROW: A football field's worth of cheeses waiting to be winnowed down to the 14 top cheeses in the world. Wakeman had the task of selecting one of the finalists for consideration, and he chose an 18-month aged Swiss gruyere.
WAKEMAN: I got a knife, plunged it through the cheese and kind of did twisting action, and as I twist, the kind of cheese popped open. It was almost flinty in texture. It kind of broke apart in a really nice clean way. And I brought it to my nose, and there was this really nice warmed milk, sweet, savory kind of aroma - really, really complex. And then the important part, I popped it in my mouth, and it was just stunning. Savory, roasted nut. There was some sweet butterscotch that was in there.
SUMMERS: That sounds delicious.
DETROW: It does, and the judges thought so, too.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: All right, we have got a 5, a 6, a 7, a 6.
DETROW: They are casting their votes there on a scale of 1 to 7.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: And cheese No. 7 - that score is about to come up on that screen.
UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: Whoa.
(APPLAUSE)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Ooh. Oh.
DETROW: The gruyere became world champion, beating out more than 5,000 other cheeses.
SUMMERS: And the finalists also included cheeses from other places that you might expect, like France, the Netherlands, the U.K. and Spain. But there were some scrappier contestants in the final round, too, like a Slovakian cheese.
WAKEMAN: The salt balance was perfect. It was a really well-balanced cheese.
SUMMERS: There was also a Japanese goat cheese that Wakeman described as a revelation, a sign that Japan's growing cheese industry might pull off an upset in the years to come.
WAKEMAN: I'm really fascinated to see how quickly their cheese-making artisan crafters come on. And I would tip them to do a bit of a surprise next year and really shock the world.
SUMMERS: And, Juana, we would be remiss if we did not mention the one homegrown U.S. cheese in the finals, a cheddar.
WAKEMAN: Pleasantly surprised. That sounds sarcastic, doesn't it? But, you know, as the Brit...
DETROW: I think that means it's time to do a taste test - American cheddar versus British cheddar.
SUMMERS: You know, Scott, old rivalries do die hard.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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