Meet the first American to win ‘Best Cheesemonger in the World’

Emilia D’Albero trained like an athlete: long hours, exacting drills, heavy lifting. She sculpted and sliced until her hands ached, then bought a second fridge to keep up with the demands of her routine.

Her sport? Cheese.

For months, the Philadelphia-based cheesemonger tasted, smelled and plated hundreds of pounds of cheese and practiced carving wheels into edible works of art. She made flash cards to memorize types of cheese and breeds of goats, sheep and cows. By the end, her life revolved around milk and microbes.

On Sept. 15, that dedication made her a world champion. In a competition that tested every skill a cheesemonger can wield, D’Albero, 31, sliced her way past the globe’s best to be crowned “Meilleure Fromagère du Monde.” That’s French for “Best Cheesemonger in the World.”

The title came with a trio of historic firsts. D’Albero is the first American to win the Mondial du Fromage, one of the world’s top cheese competitions, held every two years in Tours, France. She and her teammate, Courtney Johnson, formed the first all-female Team USA. And when Johnson claimed bronze, the two became the first Americans ever to stand on the podium together.

“This was obviously a win for the entire American cheese industry,” D’Albero said. “But even more so, it’s a win for all women and cheese all over the world.”

D’Albero’s love affair with cheese began at La Scuola di Eataly in New York City, where she landed after college to work in education and event planning. She organized cooking classes that ranged from pizza to pasta, truffles to caviar. The lessons that stuck with her, though, were always the cheese pairings.

“When it came time for me to make a decision about what I was going to do next in my career, I decided I wanted to learn a craft and really learn a skill,” D’Albero said. “I had watched so many lessons and really talented people in this cooking school, and I said ‘Cheese is next for me.’”

So the event planner became an apprentice, and started a career defined by the daily work of selling cheese, butter and dairy products. But to D’Albero — who counts Parmigiano as her favorite cheese and mountain cheeses as her favorite style — it’s never been just about sales.

“It goes a lot farther than that,” she said. “We’re also storytellers of the cheese. We are stewards of the products. We are the middleman between the maker and the consumer. And we have to represent these makers and tell their stories, always in service to the cheese.”

By 2018 — a year after she first started working with cheese — she entered her first Cheesemonger Invitational in Brooklyn. Over the next six years, she climbed rung after rung on her way to France: the Cheesemonger Invitational again, then the master’s round. Winning the master’s in March secured her one of two spots on Team USA for the Mondial du Fromage.

That’s how D’Albero arrived in Tours this fall, standing under fluorescent lights in a convention center filled with wheels, wedges and some of the sharpest cheeses in Europe. The Mondial du Fromage is the cheesemongers’ Olympics — an eight-hour obstacle course where stamina matters as much as skill.

The first challenge was a written exam that could humble a doctoral candidate, she said. “It was the hardest possible questions they could think of,” D’Albero recalled — everything from the precise date an Alpine cheese can be made to identifying a random goat by photo and listing what cheeses its milk could produce.

Then came blind tasting: four mystery cheeses, 10 minutes, and a list of details to guess — milk type, pasteurization, age, style, country of origin, even the exact name. After that, the cheesemongers vied to produce the “perfect cut.” Competitors had five minutes to slice four immaculate half-pound portions of cheese and wrap them up — all without a scale.

And then there was the most personal event: the oral presentation. Each monger had five minutes to make the judges fall in love with a cheese.

True to her taste and Italian-American background, D’Albero chose Parmigiano Reggiano — “the cheese that taught me that cheese can be an experience, rather than just an ingredient,” D’Albero told the judges during her presentation. She picked a wheel chosen and aged by her friend Giorgio Cravero, a fifth-generation cheesemaker, and described how its signature “soft and sweet” flavor profile made every bite gentler than the salty Parmesans most people know. She linked the flavor to her friend’s kindness and the way his family had once welcomed her as one of their own.

“I was nervous they’d think it was too common,” she said. “But some of the judges thanked me afterward for reminding them why it was special.” She returned to the green room and cried.

Lunch — where cheese was not served — was brief. Then came a four-hour marathon of five challenges.

First up was crafting a restaurant-quality cheese plate from a box of five surprise wedges. D’Albero used the exercise to make a point — “cheese connects us across time, across continents and across cultures.” On her plate, she drew a bold X in blue spirulina and red strawberry powder, then lined up cheeses along each arm.

Next was the “combination of tastes,” where contestants had to choose pairings that would perfectly accentuate the flavor of a 24-month Parmigiano Reggiano. D’Albero turned it into a black-pepper frico cup — a baked cheese shell — filled with a cheese soufflé, fennel pollen and strawberry balsamic jelly. She crowned it with a shard of the Parmigiano and a fennel flower she had foraged from a Philadelphia creamery and dried herself.

Then D’Albero had to perform a “cold dish transformation” of Stilton, which she reimagined as dessert: tirami-blue, a whimsical riff on tiramisu layered with mascarpone, chestnut puree, fig jam and anise-flecked corn cakes. After that was a sculpture round in which she carved three mystery cheeses into the phases of the moon. The display could contain only cheese.

The finale called upon participants to create a 100-centimeter display on the theme “shades of color.” D’Albero designed hers as a kaleidoscope of mirrored cheeses and deliberate negative space, in a bold contrast to the American tradition of abundance, she said.

After the clock ran out, D’Albero and Johnson joined their French counterpart, Matthieu Thuillier, on the podium to a chorus of cheers. But D’Albero insists the win was not hers alone.

Cheesemakers donated pounds of product so she could practice. A fashion-school friend hand-sewed the base of her display for the finale. Vendors in Philadelphia’s Italian market supplied produce; antique shops there provided the glassware. A cheese school in Philly hosted her last practice event.

“It definitely took a village,” D’Albero said.

Now she wants to pay it forward. D’Albero hopes to create educational programs that will train future competitors, passing on the skills and resources that carried her to the top.

“I may have been the first American to win the Mondial du Fromage,” she said. “But I certainly will not be the last.”