Jamie Kiesl is a 35-year-old human resources manager who lives in Mequon, Wisconsin. She is also damn good at naming cheeses.
She’s so good at it, in fact, that she won a contest during Sunday’s Milwaukee Bucks game by naming 27 distinct types of cheese in 30 seconds, handily beating Bucks’ player Sterling Brown, who named 17 in a pre-taped 30-second segment.
Video of Kiesl’s feat has made her a Wisconsin semi-celebrity, and rightfully so. She rattles off the basics—American, Swiss, Brie—but also thinks outside the box with cottage cheese, string cheese, Havarti, and three types of Jack cheese. (The “o” sounds in her pronunciations of goat and mascarpone are fantastically Wisconsin, too.)
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that a cheesehead-wearing Kiesl earned some Milwaukee Bucks swag for winning the contest. When asked how she was able to name so many cheeses—like Bubba naming shrimp—she replied: “I’ve lived in Wisconsin my whole life.”
Bravo.