Congratulations to Daphne Zepos for her Lifetime Achievement Award, to be presented by the American Cheese Society at this year's ACS conference in Raleigh:

The American Cheese Society (ACS) is pleased to announce that Daphne Zepos, cheese importer, educator, and owner of Essex Street Cheese Company and The Cheese School of San Francisco, will be presented with its 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award at the 29th Annual ACS Conference in Raleigh, NC.

The ACS Lifetime Achievement Award is presented to an individual who has earned the respect and admiration of his or her colleagues in the cheese industry. ACS members have an opportunity to nominate a candidate by presenting an application which demonstrates a nominee’s contributions to the industry. As the 2012 ACS Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Zepos is recognized for a significant and lasting impact on the American cheese industry, and her demonstrated strength in building, supporting, and advancing the work of ACS and its members.

Zepos is one of the most outspoken and dynamic cheese advocates in the United States. She is a former ACS board member, former Chairperson of the Annual ACS Judging & Competition, and a co-founder of the Cheese of Choice Coalition, an advocacy group dedicated to the preservation of raw milk and small production cheeses. From 2002 to 2005, Zepos played a lead role in selecting and maturing more than 300 cheeses in Artisanal Premium Cheese Center's affinage cheese caves, assembling many cheese collections, establishing Artisanal’s Affinage Internship Program and, with Max MacCalman, creating and teaching Artisanal’s Cheese Master Class program. In 2006, she founded the Essex Street Cheese Company, which imports a small selection of hand-selected cheeses from Europe. Together with her business partner, Kiri Fisher, Zepos and her husband Brad purchased The Cheese School of San Francisco in 2011. It is the only independent institution of its kind in the U.S. dedicated to helping people maximize their enjoyment and appreciation of cheese through education and tasting events.

Zepos received numerous nomination letters for the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award. In his letter, Ari Weinzweig, co-founder and CEO of Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, noted that “Daphne’s work to educate retailers, chefs, cheese mongers and cheese makers has contributed enormously to a huge improvement in the quality of the cheese on counters across the country. Her passion, the poetry of her cheese descriptions, her never-ending drive for better flavor, for teaching people what makes good cheese good, and for making already-good cheese even better is truly unrivaled.”