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The Beginning of the End of Raw Milk Cheese in Wisconsin?

Wheels of Bleu Mont Bandaged Cheddar, once made
exclusively from raw milk, are now pasteurized
because Cheesemaker Willi Lehner can’t find a cheese
plant that will today allow raw milk through its doors.

I have been exceptionally lucky to have been in the right place at the right time most of my life. But no luckier than in 2003, when I took a job at the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture and got drafted into a small team that would go on to help artisan cheesemakers launch a dairy renaissance in America’s Dairyland.

Since then, I’ve been privileged to watch dozens and dozens of artisan cheesemakers start-up and craft what have become national and international award-winning cheeses, and many of those cheeses have been made from raw milk.

That’s why it’s particularly painful for me to put the last part of that sentence in past tense: “have been made from raw milk.” Because whether the American consumer is aware of it or not, many Wisconsin-made artisan cheeses that were only a year ago made from raw milk, are now pasteurized.

Last week, I got lucky again – this time I was in the right place at the right time to escort a leading French scientist to visit Wisconsin cheesemakers making raw milk cheeses. Christine de Sainte Marie is a senior research fellow at the French Institute National Institute for Agricultural Research. Her current research is on the political economics of reconnecting farming, food and the environment. Instead of slow food or fast food, she is studying people who are “farming in the middle” e.g. farmers using sustainable farming methods or cheesemakers making artisan cheese, but who are not certified organic. And she came to Wisconsin to study raw milk cheese.

So you can imagine my surprise when we arrived at Bleu Mont Dairy for our pre-arranged tour with one of Wisconsin’s original raw milk cheesemakers, Willi Lehner – once described by the New York Times as an “off the grid rock star” – only to find out he hasn’t made a raw milk cheese in months. Why? With no creamery of his own, he relies on renting space at other Wisconsin cheese factories to make his award-winning creations. And now, because of increased scrutiny and inspection protocols from federal inspectors, none of those factories will allow raw milk cheese out their doors.

“I feel there is an underlying fear in the whole cheese industry, that drains away the passion of our craft. And one of the results will be less and less real raw-milk cheese,” Willi said.

Brenda Jensen, cheesemaker and owner at Hidden Springs Creamery near Westby, agrees. Brenda makes more than a half dozen different cheeses, all made from pasteurized milk. She makes one cheese from raw milk: Ocooch Mountain, an alpine-style beauty that many have compared to a sheep milk’s salute to Gruyere.

Last week, this 50-time ACS award winner for farmstead sheep milk cheeses had a FDA inspector come to her door and ask for 20 wheels of ONLY her raw milk cheeses for testing. The inspector wanted the chain of ingredients, where they came from, all lots associated from them and a make sheet with all info. None of those requests are out of line, so Brenda spent several hours reviewing what was needed. But she kept thinking: “Why just the raw milk cheese?”

“Instead of the intimidation, I would rather have the inspectors help train me on what issues they are seeing with raw milk cheeses, and how better to safeguard against having these become a problem,” Brenda said. She is now considering stopping raw milk cheese production.

Bruce Workman, at Edelweiss Creamery in Monticello, decided last year that making raw milk cheese was no longer worth the risk or the headache of increased FDA scrutiny. His Edelweiss Emmentaler, traditionally made with raw milk, is now pasteurized.

Meanwhile, some cheesemakers, such as Andy Hatch at Uplands Cheese, remain committed to making raw milk cheese. With no pasteurizer in the plant, Andy crafts the thrice-awarded ACS Best in Show Pleasant Ridge Reserve on a seasonal schedule, making cheese only when cows are grazing on fresh pasture.

On our visit to his farm last week, Andy told Christine he plans on making his raw-milk Rush Creek Reserve this year (last year, he suspended production, because of uncertainty in forthcoming FDA regulations). But he admits, his passion for making cheese is now coated by anxiety.

“What’s different now is that the decision-making behind creating a new cheese is laced with an apprehension over unclear and changing regulations,” Andy said. “Whereas before my first instinct was always towards developing something unique and expressive, now I instinctively worry first about making an acceptable product, and then second about making it delicious.”

Despite uncertainty over FDA’s potential changes with regulating raw milk cheeses, Andy hopes cheesemakers will stay the course. In an update to ACS members today, it was noted that the FDA is embracing an approach in regulating raw milk cheese that will “involve continuing outreach to stakeholders and expanding the conversation” – especially about the aging process for soft-ripened cheeses – before making any decisions on next steps in changing the 60-day rule for raw milk cheese in the United States.

“We, as cheesemakers can’t allow those concerns to trump our efforts to make expressive, distinctive cheese. If we’re given a chance to prove with testing that our cheeses are safe, than those goals need not be mutually exclusive,” Andy said.

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Got Cheese History? 100 Cheese Factories Now Documented

Newcomer cheesemaker Anna Landmark shares cheese with veteran
cheesemaker Willi Lehner, whose father emigrated from Switzerland
and managed Rysers Cheese Factory in Mt. Horeb for 21 years.

More than 100 cheese factories in southwestern Dane County are now mapped and remembered with extensive information and photos online, thanks to the Mount Horeb Area Historical Society.

The Society unveiled the new cheese factory website on Sunday in downtown Mt. Horeb on the site of the former Henze cheese warehouse, now Zalucha Studios. Next door is the former Rysers Cheese Factory, today home to the Grumpy Troll Brew Pub, where Bleu Mont cheesemaker Willi Lehner’s father – also Willi Lehner – was the managing cheesemaker for 21 years. It seems downtown Mt. Horeb, similar to much of rural Wisconsin, was once a cheese mecca.

The website is extensive, noting the years each factory operated, the types of cheese crafted, each cheesemaker’s name and the years they made cheese at the facility, as well as extensive notes on what was happening throughout the years at each location. It’s a literal treasure trove of cheese history.

So what makes someone want to create a website detailing all the cheese factories that were once in their area? Well, sometimes to understand the present, it’s helpful to understand the past. So this past winter, Society volunteers created database inventories of the area’s schools, cheese factories, churches and cemeteries.

“We found a map where it was just black with dots,” archivist Shan Thomas said of an early 20th century map that located factories in the areas surrounding Mount Horeb. “They were everywhere.”

The web resource actually began with the Society mapping schools in the area. Volunteers identified 52 – yes, 52 – schools in the area that now makes up just the Mount Horeb Area School District. Amazingly enough, 40 of them still stand, and were photographed for the project.

The Society’s schoolhouse project was the subject of an article in the Wisconsin State Journal last year, and the article piqued the interest of Doug Norgord,  a Mount Horeb resident who owns a mapping solutions company. Norgord contacted the Society and offered his services for free.  Through the technology of his company, Geographic Techniques LLC, the project took on further life.

Norgord was part of a perfect storm of people, all Mount Horeb area residents, qualified to pull off this project: Thomas, a former archivist at Luther College; former Mount Horeb school administrator and principal John Pare; computer programmer Merel Black; and Brynn Bruijn, an international photographer whose work has appeared in books and in magazines such as National Geographic and Town and Country. The volunteers also worked with the Mount Horeb Landmarks Foundation and the historical societies of Blue Mounds and Perry township.

Pare and Bruijn scouted the countryside for former schools and sought permission from homeowners who now live on those properties to photograph and document the properties. Once the volunteers got going, they saw a pattern – clustered with the schools were cheese factories, churches and cemeteries. Ask anyone who has grown up in a small town in Wisconsin, and they’ll tell you the most prominent features are the school, the bar, the cemetary, and the old cheese factory on the edge of town now turned into a house. In fact, most former cheese and butter making facilities have today become private residences and are easy to spot because of their elongated style of architecture.

“What we notice is that these little areas were communities,” Black said. “They rode on horseback, they’d drop the milk off and drop the kids off at school.”

Cheese makers at the Mount Horeb Creamery and Cheese Company, taken
on Sept. 15, 1939. The creamery building now houses the Grumpy Troll Brew
Pub. Photo courtesy of the Mt. Horeb Historical Society.

On hand Sunday to celebrate the revival of cheese factory history were several area cheesemakers, including Willi Lehner, who said he often helped his dad clean at the Rysers Cheese Factory in downtown Mt. Horeb. “My dad would often remind me that for the first two years of his apprenticeship in Switzerland, all he did was clean. He didn’t get to actually make cheese until year three.”

Also in the crowd was southwestern Wisconsin native Diana Kalscheur Murphy of Dreamfarm, who now makes amazing goat’s milk cheeses on her farm near Cross Plains, Anna Landmark of Landmark Creamery in Albany, who is making sheep, cow and mixed milk cheeses at both Cedar Grove Cheese in Plain and Clock Shadow Creamery in Milwaukee, and Tony Hook of Hook’s Cheese in Mineral Point, home to world champion cheeses including an array of aged cheddars and blues. In fact, Hook’s brother, Jerry, and sister, Julie, both cheesemakers at Hook’s, are actually alumni of Mount Horeb High School and Jerry still lives in Mount Horeb. Yes, it is a small world.

Each of the cheesemakers spoke for a few minutes, talking about their operations and remembering their family histories. A crowd of about 75 people noshed on local cheese and drank local beer, reminiscing of all cheesy things past and present.

One cheese not represented at the gathering was the stinky granddaddy of them all. The crowd got a chuckle when one attendee asked Tony Hook his favorite cheese. “The answer might surprise you,” Hook said. “It’s Limburger, made today at only one plant in the nation – Chalet Cheese Cooperative in Monroe.” Just goes to show you that no matter how many things change, one of the oldest cheeses in Wisconsin is still front and center.

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On Location: ACS in Madison

Well it’s official: the 30th American Cheese Society annual conference and competition is now on the books as one of the biggest (and do I daresay best?) cheesy shindigs in the history of cheese nerd conventions. Ever.

With nearly 1,000 cheese geeks from across North America descending upon Madison, Wisconsin this past week to talk, eat and sell cheese, most everyone is now on their way home or has made it to their final destination with their bellies full of cheese and their briefcases full of business cards. And let me just say that after spending the past 15 months planning 32 seminars, 5 tours, numerous special events and a grand Festival of Cheese featuring nearly 1,800 different cheeses for the tasting, co-chairs Bob Wills, Sara Hill and I are ready for a nap.

But before I nod off, let’s share a few photo highlights of the week.

Here’s my cheese-sister-in-crime Sara Hill after being inducted into the prestigous Guilde Internationale Des Fromagers. Check out the website – it’s in French – so you know it’s important. Sara has worked 30 years in the cheese industry and deserves this honor. Congrats, Sara!

Next, let me be the first person to tell every retailer in the nation that you need to carry the new Savory Spoon Panforte, which debuted at Saturday night’s Festival of Cheese. Featuring locally sourced cherries and honey, along with the traditional nuts which made this 15th Century Italian dessert famous, the Door County, Wisconsin version crafted by Janice Thomas can be cut to order or sold in small, gift wooden boxes sourced from France. Two words: super yummy. Contact eatpanforte@savoryspoon.com to order.

Willi Lehner and his Third Place Best in Show Bandaged Cheddar and Big Sky Grana (for the first time ever, the same cheesemaker tied himself for a Best in Show ribbon) – may have (rightfully) stolen the show …

But probably the happiest cheesemaker to win a ribbon may have been Martha Davis Kipcak maker of Martha’s Pimento Cheese. When Martha’s Pimento Cheese with Jalapenos was announced as the second place winner in the Cold Pack Cheese and Spreads with Flavor Added category, she almost couldn’t stand up in shock. But you should have seen her face when the announcer proclaimed she had also taken FIRST in the category with her original Martha’s Pimento Cheese. For someone who’s been in the food industry for 15 years, but only making cheese for less than a year, this is a well-deserved honor. Congratulations, Martha!

Before the conference proper started, ACS goers had their pick of five different tours featuring Wisconsin dairy farms and creameries. I had a blast planning and leading the Driftless Tour of Wisconsin Sheep and Goat Dairies, visiting Dreamfarm in Cross Plains, Hidden Springs Creamery in Westby, and Nordic Creamery in Westby. With a local-foods lunch catered right on the farm and a perfect blue sky, this particular tour showcased the best of Wisconsin.

Thanks to Sarah Bekkum for leading the tour at Nordic Creamery!

Thanks to Brenda Jensen (first in line!) for leading us through her amazingly beautiful dairy sheep farm and creamery.

And thanks to Diana Murphy for showing us her goat farm and creamery!

Of course, there were the seminars. This being Wisconsin, we wanted to plan some not-so-usual tasting sessions, so we brought in experts from the University of Wisconsin to lead a fluid milk tasting …

… and the first-ever cheese curd tasting session!

Of course there were also more traditional seminars, such as a 90-minute educational session on the flavor profiles of Comte.

My favorite event is always the Meet the Cheesemaker, where this year, 70 cheesemakers from across the nation and Canada lined up their wares for show and tell. Of course some cheesemakers, such as Cesar and Heydi Luis are more photogenic than others. Say cheese!

The weather could not have been more perfect to welcome members of the University of Wisconsin marching band to the Monona Terrace rooftop, where the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board threw the mother of all opening conference parties, complete with a toe-tapping band, picnic-style food, mounds o’cheese and of course, free beer. This is Wisconsin, after all.

The conference proper wrapped up Saturday night with the annual Festival of Cheese, where Best in Show winner Winnimere from Jasper Hill Farm was featured (thanks to Mateo for having three cases overnighted to the festival so everyone could have a taste)!

And where tables of blue cheese …

And smoked cheese …

 
And, well, every kind of cheese filled a room to hold 1,200 attendees.
Many, many thanks to the hundreds of volunteers, ACS staff, cheesemakers and all attendees for helping make the 30th ACS so memorable. See you next year in Sacramento, California, July 29 – August 1.