December 15, 1998

The State of Cheese

Wisconsin's cheese-makers are bringing high culture to "America's Dairyland."

By Jean T. Barrett


Joseph Widmer is holding something in his hand that clearly used to be a brick. It looks as though it sat on the ocean floor for about a century—worn down into a rounded, pinkish, irregular oblong. This piece of antique clay would be useless in construction, but to Widmer, owner of Widmer's Cheese Cellars of Theresa, Wis., it's irreplaceable. This brick was used by Widmer's grandfather to make cheese in the early 1920s. Three quarters of a century later, the grandson still employs several hundred of these bricks to weigh down the tops of the metal forms that are used to make the company's top seller, brick cheese. Widmer says that other brick cheese-makers have converted to modern, faster production modes, but he doesn't want to tamper with the gentler method that allows the curds to rest under a brick for a couple of hours—although he confesses that he had quite a time convincing local regulators to allow him to continue using the bricks. But the results speak for themselves. If your image of brick cheese is the bland supermarket variety, Widmer's shelf-cured brick will amaze you. A surface-ripened, washed-rind cheese that is a variation of Limburger, Widmer's aged brick is assertively smelly at 3 months old, with a rich, earthy aroma, a creamy, full flavor and a nice acidic tang. And it couldn't be more authentic; brick cheese was invented right here in Dodge County, Wis., in the late 1870s.

"America's Dairyland," Wisconsin is generally known for good-quality, middle-of-the-road, supermarket versions of mild brick, cheddar, Colby, mozzarella and Swiss. But veer off the highways and main streets onto Wisconsin's back roads and you'll run into dozens of small, quality-oriented cheese producers such as Widmer, who lives with his family over the factory, just like his grandfather before him.

"Wisconsin is finally breaking out of its mold of making nothing but supermarket staples," declares Steven Jenkins, who buys cheese for two Fairway markets in New York and who wrote a definitive guide to the subject, Cheese Primer (Workman Publishing), in 1996. "Producers recognize that there's a market out there for serious cheese rather than frivolous cheese, which is sold in supermarket dairy cases and is eminently, eminently forgettable. ... Now, suddenly, over the last three, four years maximum in Wisconsin, we are getting some cheeses that are making lights go on in people's heads, cheeses that are worthy of the magnificent wines that come out of this country."

Cheese-making began in Wisconsin around 1840, when settlers from Eastern dairy states such as New York and Ohio, as well as immigrants from Switzerland, Germany and other areas of Europe, brought cheese-making expertise to this land of rolling hills and rich pastures. At first, most of the cheeses produced were cheddar-type, but in 1845 a group of Swiss immigrants settled in Green County, around Monroe, and began producing the same cheeses they had enjoyed in their homeland, including Limburger and Swiss. By 1910, Wisconsin had become the leading cheese-producing state, a position it holds today. Last year, Wisconsin's 137 cheese plants accounted for 29 percent of U.S. prodution, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. California and Vermont are perhaps the best-known states for farmstead and specialty cheeses, but according to Laura Jacobs-Welch, "Wisconsin's no slouch!" Jacobs-Welch is the administrator of the American Cheese Society, a national nonprofit organization that promotes awareness and appreciation of limited-production cheeses. "Wisconsin ranks right up there with California and Vermont," she asserts, adding that the state's artisanal cheese-makers have been well represented among the winners in the ACS's annual cheese competition.

Randy Krahenbuhl of Prima Käse in Monroe scored a major coup this year when his raw-milk Gouda won first place in its category and was judged the best of all the cow cheeses presented at the 1998 ACS Judging, held in Madison on Aug. 9. Krahenbuhl, who was named as one of the first Wisconsin Master Cheesemakers in a certification program run by the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board's Center for Dairy Research, specializes in Gouda and Swiss cheese. Prima Käse, which Krahenbuhl took over after his father retired, is the last remaining U.S. manufacturer of a gargantuan 180-pound wheel of Emmentaler-type Swiss, which yields impressively large wedges for delicatessens and cheese stores to display. As it cures, the unwieldy cheese has to be gently turned and washed by hand twice weekly for six to eight weeks, one reason why other manufacturers have dropped it. "With workmen's comp, it's not worth it for most companies," explains Krahenbuhl. A slice off the huge wheel is nutty and dry-textured, with the mouth-filling aftertaste that marks a great cheese.

In the 1930s, there were more than a hundred U.S. companies producing Limburger, the surface-ripened cheese with the legendary pungent aroma. Today, just one U.S. company makes it: Chalet Cheese Co-op of Monroe, established in 1885. Twenty-nine local farms supply Chalet with milk that manager Myron Olson and his staff turn into a cheese that people either love or hate. Like brick, Limburger is a washed-rind cow's-milk cheese that is inoculated with a "smear" of bacteria linens (the same bacteria that lend characteristic flavor to Gruyère and other European cheeses), stored in a curing room for a week and turned a couple of times to promote even ripening. At 1 week old, it is packaged in layers of parchment, waxed paper and foil, which permit a bit of air to pass so that the bacteria can continue its transforming work. People like Limburger at different levels of age, depending on their taste; to mine, it is in its prime at about 3 months: pungently smelly, with a soft creaminess on the palate. The "best if used by" date that appears on all packages is five months after production.

Because Limburger is a living, breathing cheese, ripening can be hastened by keeping it at cool room temperature for a couple of days, but its pervasive aroma may cause domestic discord. Olson shares a trade secret long known to Limburger fans: An 8-ounce block of the odoriferous cheese fits nicely in a clean peanut-butter jar, lid tightly closed.

Chalet produces a million pounds of Limburger annually, but some of Wisconsin's most intriguing cheeses are made in small quantities on the very farms where the cows, sheep or goats are nourished. Among these are LoveTree Farmstead in Grantsburg, which produces an aged sheep's-milk cheese, Trade Lake Cedar, which swept this year's American Cheese Society Judging; Mossholder Farm in Appleton, which produces a unique and delicious brick-style semisoft cow's-milk cheese; and Fantôme Farm in Ridgeway, where Anne Topham makes a celebrated goat's-milk cheese.

In the early 1980s, Topham decided to change her lifestyle, move to the country and work outdoors with animals. "Goats were a more manageable size for a woman than cows," she says with a laugh. Already a goat owner, Topham began to research cheese-making, looking for information about making the sort of farmhouse chèvres she had tasted while traveling in France, but she found few resources. In 1981, she visited Laura Chenel's then-fledgling goat-cheese operation in Sonoma County, which convinced Topham that her idea was possible. A year later, she bought an old farm in Ridgeway, purchased additional goats and began experimenting. Why the French name Fantôme, which means phantom or ghost? It stems from a telephone conversation with a French friend, after Topham had just embarked on her plan to raise goats and was describing how much fun she had playing with the first two in her herd. Instead of "goats," the friend thought she said "ghosts," translating it back as "les fantômes," which caused a certain amount of consternation. It was several days before they both realized the mistake, but by then "Fantôme" had stuck.

Today, Topham produces tiny quantities of a rich and creamy, lightly tangy fresh goat's-milk cheese marketed in little plastic tubs, and even more minuscule amounts of an aged raw-milk goat cheese named Boulot that Jenkins praised as "an American treasure" in Cheese Primer. Virtually all of Topham's cheese is sold at the Madison Farmers' Market, held on Saturdays in downtown Madison from late April to early November. Fantôme Farm cheese is also frequently found on the menu at Madison's L'Etoile restaurant.

To ensure quality, Topham will only use milk from her own goats, and says she has no plans to expand. "I would rather make less of the very best cheese than get big," she says unapologetically.

The management of Salemville Cheese Co-op in rural Cambria is likewise unmoved by commercial considerations. Cheese-maker Lavern Miller and sales manager William Schrock represent a group of Amish families who settled in nearby Kingston beginning in the late 1970s. They took over the old Salemville cheese company in 1984 when local dairies to whom the Amish community had sold milk insisted that they automate milking operations, a move that would have been contrary to Amish practices.

To listen to the sad-faced, laconic Miller relate the tribulations of Salemville's early years, when lack of capital was exceeded only by lack of experience, is to marvel at human persistence. But the Amish persevered, eventually developing what has become a highly creditable line of blue-veined cheeses, most of which are sold to supermarkets and food-service outlets by distributor Dan Carter Inc. of Mayville. In 1997, Salemville's Gorgonzola took first place in the blue-veined category at the American Cheese Society Judging, besting eight competitors from around the country.

t Chicago's Zinfandel restaurant, which specializes in regional American cuisine, executive chef and co-owner Susan Goss cooks with and serves several Wisconsin cheeses, including Chalet's Limburger, Fantôme Farm's goat, Mossholder's brick, LoveTree's sheep's-milk cheeses, and both the blue and Gorgonzola from Salemville. Goss is a fan of Wisconsin cheeses in general and Salemville's in particular. "Their blue cheeses are really good quality," she says. "Some of the domestic blues have an acidic taste. Salemville's has a rich creaminess reminiscent of its European counterparts."

All this attention to small producers of distinctive Wisconsin cheeses may seem like a recent phenomenon—and indeed it is—but it echoes the past. Wisconsin is a place where full-flavored, honest cheeses have a long history. In the late 1800s and well into this century, Wisconsin farmers, many of whom were descended from sturdy German and Swiss stock, favored aromatic, heady cheeses, such as aged brick, Limburger, Liederkranz and aged Swiss and cheddar, which were ideal for serving with thick slabs of homemade bread and a dark beer on a cold winter night.

Now, consumers seem to be rediscovering these artisanal Wisconsin specialties. Lately, Widmer has observed that the customers who visit his operation seem less inclined toward the bland varieties and more interested in full-flavored cheeses. "Peoples' taste buds are turning to more authentic flavors, like surface-ripened brick," he says.

None of this surprises Jacobs-Welch. "Way back in the history of cheese-making in Wisconsin, the state was full of hundreds and hundreds of cheese-makers producing distinctive cheeses," she notes. "And even now, Wisconsin has large numbers of smaller cheese-making operations all around the state. And it's kind of an interesting chain of events to see this come back to square one, where the prominence is coming back to the smaller maker. ... Things do tend to go full circle."

CHEESE TRAILS

Some of the best Wisconsin cheeses never show up in supermarkets, but they can be purchased at the farms or factories themselves, and most producers fill orders by mail. Note that many cheese producers sell a full line of cheeses in their retail stores, so always ask which cheeses were produced in-house. In the following listing, major specialties of each producer appear after the information box.

Chalet Cheese Co-op

N. 4858 County Road N, Monroe, WI 53566 Telephone (608) 325-4343 Limburger (Country Castle brand) and aged brick (Bierkäse brand) available at factory retail store, or widely available in supermarkets. Fantôme Farm

6378 Rosy Lane, Ridgeway, WI 53582 Telephone (608) 924-1266 Fresh goat cheese and aged Boulot available at Madison Farmers' Market at Capitol Square in downtown Madison on Saturdays between late April and early November.

LoveTree Farmstead

12413 County Road Z, Grantsburg, WI 54840 Telephone (715) 488-2966 Trade Lake Cedar aged sheep's-milk cheese, Big Holmes fresh sheep's-milk cheese. No mail order; call for outlets in your area.

Mossholder Farm

4017 N. Richmond St., Appleton, WI 54915 Telephone (920) 734-7575 Mossholder Cheese is a proprietary brick-style semisoft cow's-milk cheese made from unpasteurized milk from the Mossholders' own herd of 45 cows. Available at four levels of aging at the farm retail store or by mail. Prima Käse

P.O. Box 0448, Monticello, WI 53570 Telephone (608) 938-4227 Emmentaler-type Swiss and raw-milk Gouda, as well as other specialties, available at the factory retail store or by mail.

Salemville Cheese Co-op

W. 4481 County Road GG, Cambria, WI 53923 Telephone (920) 394-3433 Gorgonzola and blue cheeses available at the factory retail store. For availability elsewhere, call distributor Dan Carter Inc., (920) 387-5740.

Widmer's Cheese Cellars

P.O. Box 127, Theresa, WI 53091 Telephone (920) 488-2503 Aged shelf-cured brick available at the factory retail store or by mail. The best sources for Wisconsin farmstead and specialty cheeses are generally the producers themselves. One local retailer with a good selection of Wisconsin cheeses is Baumgartner's Cheese Store & Tavern, 1023 16th Ave., Monroe, WI 53566, (608) 325-6157. Many specialty cheese shops around the country also carry Wisconsin cheeses—ask your cheese-monger.

The American Cheese Society has an informative newsletter; an annual subscription costs $30. Contact them at American Cheese Society, P.O. Box 303, Delavan, WI 53115-0303, (414) 728-4458. The results of the 1998 ACS cheese judging are available on the Internet at www.cheesesociety.org.

Jean T. Barrett is a Los Angeles-based writer and frequent contributor to Wine Spectator.


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