Here they are, the 2012 American Cheese Society Best in Show winners, chosen from out of 1,711 entries and 122 categories:

Best in Show: Beecher’s Handmade Cheese Flagsheep, from Seattle, Washington.

2nd Place: Valley Shepherd Creamery Crema de Blue, a cave-aged, farmstead sheep’s milk blue from New Jersey

3rd Place: Emmi Roth USA Grand Cru® Surchoix, produced in southern Wisconsin in the traditional manner, in large copper vats.

Read the full list of winners here!

As I posted earlier today, the entire culture crew is in Raleigh, North Carolina, cheesing at the 29th annual ACS conference. In addition to Day Three highlights, we'll have an exclusive on the Best in Show winners (out of 1,711 entries, and 122 categories), just minutes after they’ve been announced, so stay tuned!

Today’s been another whirlwind of seminars interspersed with networking and socializing with friends old and new (and lots of cheese nibbles in between). My favorite seminar thus far was a panel on “Romance & Reality: Translating Cheese Info. For Consumers.”  The next time a cheesemonger shoves a sample in your mouth before answering your questions, bear this in mind: sometimes a cheese is so amazing, it defies description. Tasting is often more effective than mere words.

The entire culture crew is in Raleigh, North Carolina, right now, OD’ing on dairy, and I’ve been tasked with providing all y’all with a daily rundown of the 29th annual American Cheese Society conference. Here's a highlights reel for Day One.

Although many of us were in transit August 1st, early arrivals had the option of partaking in additional-fee events such as the Chapel Hill Farm-to-Market tour, a Curds & Beer: Raleigh-Durham Pub Crawl, or, for the truly masochistic, the inaugural Certified Cheese Professional (CCP) exam.

Things really kicked off on Thursday, with a brilliant keynote address by Colorado State University Professor of Animal Science and author Temple Grandin, one of the world’s most accomplished, high-functioning autistic adults.

A big development here at culture is our new collaboration with the best-selling “Dummies” book series. Culture co-founder Lassa Skinner and I are co-authoring “Cheese for Dummies,” which, in addition to curtailing our blog posts, has been quite the learning experience thus far.

In sharing stories with fellow cheese dorks, I’m starting to realize the extreme measures to which people will resort for a fix. I’m not talking smuggling French cheese past U.S. customs in one’s underwear, although that’s certainly admirable.

No, I’m talking about situations that are perhaps a bit humiliating, if not outright pathetic. I seem to find myself in these situations with some regularity, in part because I’m frequently on the road (here or overseas) for my work as a food and travel journalist. The fact that I’m lactose intolerant just adds to the fun.