Tough choices as usual!

We didn't give you all a lot of time to dream up fresh rhymes for this year's contest (just a week or so), but we still saw an outpouring of casienated love.

Poems tended strongly towards the sweet (who win Briar Rose Creamery's goat cheese and chocolate truffles) with fewer works addressing the spicy (who win a selection of Virginia Chutney Co.'s tasty cheese lubricants). The field also tilted heavily towards submitter Lisa, who crushed the competition with sheer volume.

The Winners

♥ A top pick from our lovelorn staff was Jaclyn Stevenson's travelog in free verse, with our expatriot "foreign girl" falling for the charms of an open-air market. Sweet is the word.

It's time once again for culture's annual Valentine's day poetry contest. If music be the food of love, then cheese be the poetry of food... or love be cheese of music. Or something.

As always, the rules are simple: sign in and post your poetry in the comment thread below. Use any form you wish—sonnet or limerick or free-verse, and employ any muse, be it a fair lad, lass, monger, or succulent cheese—but your masterpiece must include both l'amour and le fromage. You can check out last year's entries for inspiration and read who won the judge's hearts.

Good Evening! It's time again for culture's annual Scary Dairy contest.

The rules are simple: spin a spooky cheese-centric tale of terror in the comment thread below. 500 words or less, please. The best tale will win a bag of cheesy Halloween tricks & treats. We will pick a winner Nov. 4.

Need inspiration? Check out last year's blood curdling tales of ghostly milk murders, evil sheep, dairy zombies, and of course, the horrifying Stuff-like cheese of last year's winning entry: here, here, here, and here, and then post your own below!

Thank you!

In 2008, culture magazine started when a couple friends met around a kitchen table to talk about their love of cheese. Three years later, we've got cheese fans all over the world coming together to celebrate cheese and the people who make it, sell it, and eat it, and social media has been a big part of that story.

Contest closed! Elizabeth Farquar of Portland OR is the winner of our random drawing. Thank you to all the wedge heads!

Results are in! Billygoat Austin has made the selection, and the winners of the contest are...

Summer's almost gone, and you still haven't taken your goat on a picnic? Well, it's time!

In honor of national goat cheese month, culture's giving away a fabulous summer picnic pack with award-winning Redwood Hill goat cheese, scrumptious Daelia's biscuits for cheese, and Bambu's eco-friendly All-Occasion Veneerware plates and cutlery to eat it off of.

All we need from you is the #1 reason to take your goat with you on vacation.

Hola from Spain! I landed this morning in Barcelona and was then taxied to the town of Vic, an hour northwest of Barcelona for Lactium 2011—a gathering of Spanish cheesemakers and street cheese fare. As one of the fortunate invitees of this event, I get be to part of the “Super Jury,” a group of 34 international judges who will name The Best Catalan Cheese on Saturday.  The festival begins tomorrow, May 6, when market stalls on the wide boulevard, Rambla del Carme fill up with cheesemakers and the contest ensues. Eyewitness reports on that to come. . . 

The judges have returned their verdict

After extensive deliberations over tax day menus, both pathetic and mouth-watering, we have selected the winners:

April 15th 18th is fast approaching!*

culture readers, what will April 16 19th look like? Will you celebrate your rebate with Champagne and Epoisses, or tighten your belt with tapwater and dry rinds?

We're giving away a pair of prizes to spur your bacchanal or help loft you over the lean times!

Post your ideal apres-filing menu, along with your estimated payment or return (the contest is anonymous, but you wouldn't cheat on your taxes, right?). A crack team of financial experts headed by culture's own long-suffering bookkeeper Roland Timmons will select one winner each each from the most luxurious, and the most abject proposals.

The Culture Cheese Wrap Contest evolved from Elaine’s experience at the Cheesemonger Contest by Larkin Cheese Distributors in New York. Among many other parts of the event, Elaine thought that the cheese wrapping would be a particularly successful and fun idea for California's Artisan Cheese Festival. We created a two-part competition for both cheese consumers and professionals, giving every cheese-lover the chance to show off their skills in the art of the Cheese Wrap.

The competition proved very fun indeed. Congratulations to the winner of the amateur competition – Mike Lucia from Copain Wines! We hope you enjoy the prizes.