Perfection. You can’t do better than that. For Rogue Creamery’s Rogue River Blue, the perfect score rocketed it to the top of the World Cheese Awards in Bergamo, Italy, earlier this month. A grape leaf-wrapped cow’s milk wheel from Oregon, this luscious blue is now the 2019 World Champion Cheese, the first time a U.S. cheese has earned that honor. Created less than 20 years ago, it vanquished international cheeses with decades of history. Ironically, the winning wheel was not the one that Rogue president David Gremmels intended to enter.

When it debuted in 2002, Rogue River Blue was a raw-milk cheese made only in autumn, when the milk peaks in fat and protein. Hoping to give the five-pound wheels some local cachet, Gremmels and his then-partner Cary Bryant wrapped each one in local grape leaves steeped in Oregon pear brandy. They made 300 wheels the first year. Last year, they produced 10,000.

Pear spirits have replaced the pear brandy (part of the creamery’s transition to organic production). And a few years ago, the company devised a pasteurized-milk version of the cheese for the Australian market. Rogue exports the raw-milk wheels to EU countries and sells both types in the U.S. It is matured for eight months to a year.

I spoke to Gremmels a few days after the award announcement. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Where were you when you heard the news?

It was early in the morning and I was in the field with my cows. I got a call from one of the judges, and he said, “David, you’ve done it.” And I thought, “Oh, no. Done what?”

How did you choose the wheel that you entered?

Well, that’s a funny story. Because the competition was in Europe and we export our raw-milk Rogue Rover Blue to the EU, I chose a raw-milk lot. I was confident about it. But, to my surprise, our talented packaging and warehouse team, with all good intentions, carefully packaged and shipped a pasteurized wheel.

How would you describe a perfect Rogue River Blue?

The cheese is really rich, with brown-butter and cream notes. I get vanilla, milk chocolate, toasted hazelnuts, a hint of huckleberry. It has a layered flavor and instantly melts in the mouth. It has medium spice from the Penicillium roqueforti and fruitiness from the pear spirits.

Can you explain to Planet Cheese readers why Rogue River Blue is so expensive? I just paid $52 a pound for it.

There is so much labor in this cheese. It’s one cheese that everyone at Rogue touches. Eighteen months ahead, in the spring, we hand-pick 50,000 to 100,000 grape leaves. We only make the cheese during a short window. And we haven’t changed the price in five years. Even when we moved from conventional to organic and our costs went up, we really tried to minimize that impact.

Your original partner, Cary Bryant, left Rogue Creamery in 2010. He was the cheesemaker, the microbiologist. Were you worried that the cheese would change? Were your customers worried?

From the beginning, we knew it was important to create a strong talent base. And that pool of talented cheesemakers has continued to grow. So it was a loss for me on a personal level but not on a business level. The key to any business is focusing on your vision and mission. When I acquired Rogue in 2002, I created a three-word vision: “safe, healthy, positive.” Later I added “other-centered.” That is what led us to become one of the first Certified B Corps in Oregon, using business as a force for good. I like to say that, at Rogue, we do that one wheel at a time.

Rogue River Blue is available at small independent cheese shops, at many premium regional chains and, nationally, at Whole Foods Markets and Murray’s Cheese counters. In the San Francisco Bay Area, look for it at Cheese Plus, Cowgirl Creamery, Good Life, Rainbow Grocery, Market on Market and Union Larder in San Francisco; at Ovello in Sonoma; and at Woodlands Market in Tiburon.