“When I was a little kid, I’d go down to the cheese house, and we used to have the big Swiss wheels of cheese. There’d be a big cloth on there. I made my first quarter by helping them scrape the cheese off those cheese cloths. I was pretty young, maybe 3 or 4 years old. I remember that,” mused new Grand Champion Cheesemaker Richard Guggisberg, who was given the official honor at the Friday night, Sept. 30 festivities on the main stage at the Ohio Swiss Festival.

“I’ve been a cheesemaker all my life – all 29 years,” he joked, as his wife, Ann, poked him in the ribs. Guggisberg isn’t telling his age, but admits he has been a cheesemaker for much longer than 29 years.

“I asked for a raise when I was about 18. When we started making Baby Swiss, we’d make a little more every year. I’d have to change each one of those wheels every night, and after we got up to about 3,000 wheels a night, I said, ‘I need a raise!’ Baby Swiss came out when I was still little,” he noted of the famous little sibling of the original Swiss cheese, which has much smaller holes and a lighter taste, and which the Guggisberg family first created.

This is the fifth year that the Guggisberg Cheese company has been named Grand Champion, the other years being 2002, 2004, 2005, and 2009. The cheese competition has been going on since 1949, and many of the other once plentiful cheese house names are no more – companies like Fred C. Burkey Dairy, Valley View Dairy, Champion Dairy, Sharp Run Dairy, Kidron Cheese, Ragersville Dairy, Sugarcreek Dairy, Steiner Cheese, Farmerstown Cheese, Doughty Valley Cheese, Middlefield Swiss Cheese, and Brewster Cheese are names from days gone by, although all won the championship at least one or more times in the past 60-plus years. Now, only Guggisberg, Pearl Valley, and Broad Run cheese houses are still in the yearly running to see who produces the best cheese of the past 12 months.

“We took first place in the other two contests, so we had some good confidence coming into this one,” said Guggisberg of the Dairy Month and Ohio State Fair contests, the first two of the triad. “This year was especially good for us. We took a first in the United States Cheese Championship up in Green Bay, Wis., and we got a second in the World Dairy Expo. So in addition to these Ohio contests, it’s been a good year.

“We get a plaque and a ribbon (for being Grand Champion Cheesemaker), and we display it in the office,” he continued.

In addition to the Grand Champion Cheesemaker contest, a People’s Choice taste testing was held on Thursday evening, Sept. 29. There, celebrity judges chose Pearl Valley as their top taste choice, followed by Broad Run Dairy and Guggisberg Cheese. After the taste testing and a cheese eating contest, an auction of blocks of cheese was held, with all profits going to the Ohio Swiss Festival.

“It’s a good thing. Company wise, we’ve got a lot of great, great people. We’ve got a wonderful team, and that’s what it takes,” said Guggisberg of his company’s 2011 win. “It’s a statement about our quality and who we are. That’s why we really enjoy these contests.”