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New King of Kings: Louie’s Pudding

Built in 1890 by “Butter King” John Newman of Elgin, sold to “King of Kings” cheesemaker Albert Deppler of Green County, and today owned by Anne Lancaster, whose product logo – in a nod to the creamery’s past – includes a bright yellow crown perched on the “L” in its label, the century-old Springbrook Creamery on the banks of the Pecatonica River in Argyle has been home to two kings of dairy in its lifetime.

With the rebirth of her family’s “Louie’s” line of dairy products, owner Anne Lancaster is working hard to become the third king of this Wisconsin creamery. And this time, she’s doing it with pudding.

Now home to Louie’s Puddings, the creamery is where Anne and her team of four part-time employees make small-batches of baked custard and home-made bread, rice, tapioca and chocolate pudding. Products are marketed regionally in local grocery stores and convenience shops.

Known for its colorful lids featuring a pencil sketch of the creamery behind the regal Louie’s label, Louie’s puddings are making something of a comeback here in Wisconsin. The business was started by Anne’s parents-in-law (the original Louie) in 1984, after the couple retired from farming, and like most “retired” farmers, they promptly started another business.

All of the recipes, except for the Chocolate Pudding, are Old World family recipes. The chocolate is a new creation, and is my favorite. Sweetened with sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup, it carries a creamy and rich taste, not a sickly sweet flavor one often finds with commodity chocolate puddings.

In addition, Anne and her part-time team also make Baked Custard, plain, with raisins or with rice (yummy), and add raisins to the original Old World Rice recipe, for a fabulous Rice with Raisin home-made pudding. Making only 1,200 pounds of pudding a day, Louie’s Puddings is an anomaly in the pudding world. Not only is it small, it uses custom-made equipment to produce that home-kitchen taste.

Each day starts when milk is delivered and pasteurized, and then cooked for 55 minutes at over 200 degrees. Ingredients and flavors are then added, cooking stops, and the mixture is stirred. The batch is poured into a hopper, which dispenses it piping hot into plastic tubs. It is then sealed and wheeled to a cooling room, where later it will be labeled and packaged for delivery, carrying a 45-day shelf life.

Although distribution right now is limited, Anne is working to increase sales. She also dreams about sharing the 3,000 square-foot space with other dairy artisans.

“I’d like for this building to become an artisan dairy incubator, similar to what Bob Wills is doing for the artisan cheese community,” Anne says. “I know there’s quite a few people who have a good recipe and a unique product, but can’t afford a factory of their own. We’re looking at adding some equipment and possibly renting out space by the day.”

If anyone can make that happen, it’s Anne. She and her husband were both raised on family farms in the Argyle and South Wayne area. A banker by trade, she bought the business from her retired in-laws in 2009 and since then, has increased production, shelf-life and flavors.

She has no desire to return to the corporate world and appears to have found her calling, in of all places, an old butter plant built into a hillside along a river that is also home to the community’s bomb shelter in southwest Wisconsin (more than 2,000 square feet expands underground and is used for storage).

“I’m going to be making pudding for a long time,” Anne says. “It suits me. I’m looking forward to the future, working on new plans and new flavors.”

So are we, Anne. And if that future could contain a certain someone’s favorite pudding, as in perhaps, ahem, Pistachio, we’d love Louie’s Puddings even more. Just sayin’.

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Growing Cheesemakers

My family has the darnedest time figuring out what exactly it is I do for a living.

I grew up in a small town, moved away after college, and don’t get home very often. So on the rare occasions I go back for weddings or funerals, I often stand to the side and amusingly watch my father, a retired farmer, get asked by former neighbors and old friends what his two daughters grew up to be.

My sister has it easy. “Well the oldest one’s a lawyer,” Dad will say with a big grin. And then he’ll go on to talk about how she owns her own law firm in Milwaukee and how she helps people who’ve been discriminated against at their jobs. He might even describe her latest case, or talk about a big company she just sued. My sister is a very good attorney.

“Oh, isn’t that nice,” the little grayed hair ladies will say, bobbing their heads and clucking approvingly. And then, inevitably, the question will come: “And what about your youngest – what does she do?”

And that’s when the eyebrows furrow, the eyes squint, and the look of confusion starts.

A slow inhale. A slower exhale.

“Well …. she used to be a newspaper reporter. She was a real good reporter,” he’ll say. “She won lots of awards.” Pause. Longer Pause. “But now she works with cheese. I think she writes about cheese. I know she does some real nice events in Madison.” And then he’ll frantically search around the room to find me smiling at him, wave me over, and have me explain what exactly it is that I do.

But therein lies the problem. Hell, even I have a hard time explaining what it is I do for a living.

I’m a writer. I’m a storyteller. I’m also an event organizer. I like to write about cheese. I like to talk about cheese. I like to organize events around cheese. And, of course, I eat a lot of cheese.

Mostly, though, I like to make stuff happen and then stand in a corner and watch it unfold.

That’s what happened today when I wrote a little press release about a young woman who’s just starting out in the cheese world. I don’t think she even has any idea of what’s in store for her. But I can see it. Her name is Anna Landmark. Today, she’s a policy research director for a Wisconsin non-profit organization, who with her husband, owns and runs a small-scale sustainable farm in Albany, Wis.

Five years from now, she’ll be an award-winning cheesemaker crafting original sheep’s milk cheeses and clearing a broader path for Wisconsin artisan cheese. She’s the kind of gal who’s going to put her own mark on the dairy industry, and she’s going to do it in style.

You see, Anna was selected from a wide field of applicants for a $2,500 scholarship from Wisconsin Cheese Originals, an organization I started in 2009 to help consumers connect with Wisconsin cheesemakers. She is mid-way through the courses required for the cheesemakers license and is working to secure an apprenticeship this fall.

As you know, Wisconsin is the only state in the nation that requires its cheesemakers to be licensed, an 18-month process that involves attendance at five university courses, 240 hours of apprenticeship under a licensed cheesemaker, and a written exam at the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture.

While big and even medium-sized cheese companies can afford to put beginning cheesemakers through the licensing process, smaller, artisan companies, and especially those just starting out, can find the process daunting and sometimes, insurmountable. That’s why I started the scholarship in 2010 – to create a platform for beginning cheesemakers whom I am confident will go on to do great things if they can just get past the hurdle of getting their license. Past scholarship recipients include Katie Hedrich, a goat cheesemaker in Chilton, Wis., who went on to be the first and youngest woman goat’s milk cheesemaker to be named a U.S. Champion; and Rose Boero, a goat and cow’s milk cheesemaker in Custer, Wis., who will complete her cheesemaker’s license this spring.

While all of this year’s scholarship applicants were more than well-qualified, Anna’s application stood out because it told a story. And perhaps because I myself am a storyteller, her story spoke to me.

Anna’s story begins at her grandparents’ dairy farm in Mount Horeb, Wis., where a big block of Swiss cheese was brought out every morning for breakfast and then left on the table under a glass dome until after supper. Her story continues through the terrible milk prices of the 1980s, when she watched her grandfather become discouraged, eventually retire, and then discourage his grandchildren from ever getting into farming. Her story blossoms with the discovery that she loves to cook, and how that love led to making cheese in her kitchen (her first batch of mozzarella was so terrible she didn’t attempt to make cheese again for two years). And it ends with the story of buying a small property outside Albany in 2009 with her husband, where a new story is now starting: one of buying a gentle, stubborn, noisy Milking Shorthorn named Freckles who produced so much milk that Anna started making cheese just to use it all up. Then came along two Alpine dairy goats, and she made goat’s milk cheeses. Then heritage breed sheep, and finally sheep’s milk cheeses, where she found her true passion: to become a sheep’s milk cheesemaker.

After she uses the scholarship money to earn her cheesemaker’s license, Anna plans to craft fresh sheep’s milk cheeses, and differentiate them from her cheesemaking idol Brenda Jensen’s cheeses, by draining the curd for a longer period of time and perhaps rolling the cheese in herbs and distributing it in various shapes. She’s also going to make aged sheep’s milk cheeses, including thistle-rennet cheeses, which will require her to develop her own rennet from thistle flowers. This type of cheese is currently only available via import from Portugal and Spain.

“Wisconsin has such a robust cheese industry and I live in the heart of it,” Landmark said in her scholarship application. “However, the majority of sheep milk cheeses consumed in the United States is still imported. I would like to grow this emerging industry and help provide a stable market for sheep dairies in my region.”

I have no doubt she’ll accomplish all that and much more. Anna will be a cheesemaker, and she’ll be a good one. She says her grandfather is now enjoying watching her entry/return into the dairy and cheese world, but is still skeptical anyone on a small scale can really make a living doing it.

Good cheesemakers can make a living doing it. And Anna will be good cheesemaker. I’m looking forward to watching her grow and discover all the things of which she’s capable, all of the things I see in her when she talks about making cheese.

So perhaps that’s one way I can explain to folks what it is that I do: I help grow cheesemakers. But then again, that’s not going to be an easy career for my father to explain to the neighbors either. So I guess I’ll stick with being a writer who has a sister who is a good attorney. That’s good enough for me.

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The Masters of Green County Cheese: Mustaches, Biceps & All

One tends to underestimate just how big a giant wheel of Emmentaler is until – if you’re like me – you try and fit one into the back of your car.

Bruce Workman, Master Cheesemaker at Edelweiss Creamery in Monticello, knows exactly how big – and how heavy – a “Big Wheel Swiss” is, and he’s smart enough to know a loading dock and two strong men are instrumental to transporting it from an aging warehouse into the trunk of a Honda Accord. That’s because he’s the only cheesemaker left in America crafting 180-pound wheels of Old World Emmentaler, and he’s got the biceps to prove it.

One photo shoot and a strained back later, I had a lot more respect for this jumbo cheese, and for the man who spends 14 hours a day making it in an original Swiss copper vat he imported from Europe. “There used to be 200 little cheese plants in Green County, all producing authentic copper-kettle Swiss,” Workman says. “Over the years, as cheesemaking became industrialized and companies worked to reduce their labor costs, it was abandoned. I’ve set out to bring it back.”

As one of 10 Master Cheesemakers who call Green County home, Workman is considered by many as one of the state’s most innovative cheese geniuses. He’s certified as a Master in nine – yes nine – different cheese varieties, and routinely wins national and international cheese contests with his Gouda, Havarti and Muenster. In a region where the number of dairy cows rival the number of people, Workman is one of the reasons Green County is considered Wisconsin’s epicenter of cheesemaking.

When you’re talking about the cheesemakers of Green County, three words immediately come to mind: innovation, craftsmanship and tradition. Cheesemaking goes back more than 150 years in this region of southwest Wisconsin, where Holstein and Brown Swiss cows eat grass sprouting from the region’s sweet soils and limestone-filtered water. In fact, grass in the Driftless Region of Wisconsin – home to Green County – is considered to be some of the best grass in the Midwest for cheesemaking. In what could easily pass for a Bud Lite commercial with Clydesdale horses frolicking in the background, the cheesemakers in Green County have a saying: “Have patience. In time, grass becomes milk, and milk becomes cheese. And if you’re lucky, it becomes Green County cheese.” This “cheesy” saying happens to be true: cheese made in Green County is routinely judged as some of America’s best.

Indeed, Green County is routinely touted as Wisconsin’s cheesemaking hub.  In fact, 100 years ago — in the days of metal milk cans, horse-drawn wagons and cheesemakers who could lift twice their own weight — this 585-square-mile region was home to a cheese plant on nearly every four-corner crossroads. Today, more than a dozen dairy processing plants, many still owned by farmer cooperatives and operated by third- and fourth-generation cheesemakers, continue to make up the backbone of America’s Dairyland, handcrafting award-winning cheese year after year.

Looking for the best of Green County cheeses? These plants offer retail outlets, often staffed by cheerful gray-haired ladies, who take a break from packaging to ring up your order with a pencil and paper.

Chalet Cheese Cooperative
At the only cheese plant in the nation still making Limburger – the stinky cheese that Americans love to hate – Master Cheesemakers Myron Olson and Jamie Fahrney also craft Baby Swiss, German Style Brick and Brick, all in open vats and by hand. Located near the middle of nowhere, use your GPS to find this historic cheese factory. Otherwise, like me, you may end up at the Monroe Municipal Airport wondering where you took a wrong turn. Address: N4858 Cty. N, Monroe. Hours: Monday – Friday, 7 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.; Saturday, 8 a.m. – 10 a.m.

Chula Vista Cheese Company
Master Cheesemaker Jim Meives and his team specialize in Hispanic cheeses, crafting more than 40,000 pounds of their signature “Chihuahua” cheese a day – a Hispanic melting cheese that tastes somewhere between mild cheddar and mozzarella. Address: 2923 Mayer Rd, Monroe. Hours: Monday – Friday, 8 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Decatur Dairy
Third generation cheesemaker Steve Stettler, a Master in Brick, Farmer’s, Havarti, Muenster and Swiss cheeses, makes some of the best specialty cheeses in Green County. His signature mustache and deep drawl characterize him as the cowboy cheesemaker of the Midwest. Address: W1668 Cty. F, Brodhead. Hours: Monday – Saturday, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Emmi Roth Alp and Dell
Known for its cellar-aged Gruyere, Emmi Roth USA also makes Fontina, Havarti, Edam, Gouda, Raclette, Rofumo, and Butter Kase. The modern and spacious retail outlet links to a cheesemaking viewing hallway and timeline of the company’s history in the United States. Address: 627 2nd St, Monroe. Hours: Monday – Saturday 9 a.m. – 5 p.m; Sunday 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Maple Leaf Cheese
Master Cheesemakers Jeff Wideman and Paul Reigle make Edam, Gouda, Cheddar, Flavored Jacks, Queso Blanco, Cheddar Blue and Yogurt cheese. Address: W2616 Hwy. 11/81, Juda. Hours: Monday – Friday, 8 a.m. – 6 p.m.; Saturday 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.; Sunday, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Silver-Lewis Cheese Cooperative
Just as close to the middle of nowhere as Chalet Cheese, Silver Lewis is worth the hunt. Owners Josh and Carla Erickson specialize in Brick, Muenster and Flavored Jacks, with the retail store located just steps outside the cheesemaking room. If you’re looking for a step back in cheesemaking time, rev up the DeLorean and head back to the future. Address: W3075 Cty. EE, Monticello. Hours: Monday – Friday, 6 a.m. – 1 p.m.; Saturday 7 a.m. – 11:30 am.

Of course, Green County also offers an amazing cheese festival and cheese museum.  Open from April thru October, the National Historic Cheesemaking Center offers a glimpse of cheesemaking in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, when Monroe was the “Swiss Cheese Capital of the USA.” Also step inside the century old Imobersteg Cheese Factory which sat undiscovered for almost a century. The wooden one-room factory was moved to and restored on the National Historic Cheesemaking Center’s campus.
And, last but certainly not least, be sure and mark the dates of Sept. 14-16 on your calendar for Green County Cheese Days, home to one of the best parades, cheese tents and everything-possible-cheese-related festivals in the country. Only held once every two years, this celebration is worth trekking cross-country for. You’ll see all the Green County cheesemakers in their glory! 
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Behind the Curtain at the World Championship Cheese Contest

The World Championship Cheese Contest came and went in Madison this week. With it, hundreds of industry volunteers, cheesemakers and international judges unloaded, unboxed, unwrapped, inspected, labeled, opened, sniffed, tasted, spat out, rewrapped, reboxed, and reloaded 2,504 cheeses one by one, wheel by wheel, wedge by wedge, all in a quest to find the best.

Mission accomplished. While the Dutch and Swiss again took top honors (the World Champion was Vermeer, a lowfat Dutch Gouda made by FrieslandCampina – yes, that’s right, the frickin’ Dutch beat us with a lowfat Gouda), Wisconsin cheesemakers did well overall, earning gold medals in 30 of the 82 classes.

Held over the course of three days at the Monona Terrace, the World Championship Cheese Contest is one of the best cheese events held in Wisconsin. That’s because it’s expertly executed by the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association (WCMA), which has been running the contest since 1957.

Once held in obscurity in a butter cooler in Green Bay, the contest now takes center stage at a sprawling convention center in the state capital. Today, the WCMA, led by executive director John Umhoefer, calls on more than 200 volunteers to help run the three-day contest. Many – perhaps even most of the volunteers – are Wisconsin cheesemakers who happily carve three days out of their own cheesemaking schedule to schlep around cheese made by others from around the world.

From Monday morning through Wednesday mid-day, two distinct bodies of cheese people fill the voluminous Exhibition Hall at Monona Terrace. One group wears white caps and white jackets, and stands in front of the red velvet curtains. These are the judges. From Argentina to Australia, 20 international cheese experts wind their way to Madison to spend three days inspecting, sniffing, tasting and spitting out everything from Gruyere to Gorgonzola (they spit out each cheese so as to not have hundreds of samples mulling around in their tummies – I’m not sure all the Pepto Bismol in the world could cure that kind of stomach ache).

The second group wears blue hats and white coats, and mostly works behind the red velvet curtains. This is the “B Team”, as they are affectionately called, and these are the folks – all Wisconsin cheesemakers and industry volunteers – who unbox and unpack each and every piece of cheese for the judges to inspect, and then repack and rebox to put back on pallets to be zipped back to the cooler by another set of volunteers who have moving pallets down to a science.

While both of these teams are busy working, a separate team in a separate room, mostly filled with computers, printers and cans of caffeine, tally the judges’ scores. This team – led by the amazing Jane Cisler at WCMA – is the invisible hub of the contest, always working, often running, to get scores entered as soon as possible and up and live on the contest website. Without Jane and her team of volunteers, the contest simply would not happen. They are truly the wizards behind the curtain.

By Wednesday afternoon, judges have whittled down the 2,504 cheeses to just 82. These are the Gold Medal cheeses – the top cheeses in each of the classes. This year, the contest mixed things up a bit, and had the judges pare the top 82 down to a “Sweet 16”, which were then judged in front of a sold-out live audience at an evening gala in the Monona Terrace ballroom. More than 400 super foodies showed up to mingle with cheese industry folk and taste 50 cheeses from around the world, all the while watching the final round of gold-medal judging.

At about 8:20 p.m., the crowd was rewarded for its patience with the naming of the Second Runner-Up (an Appenzeller from Switzerland), the First Runner-Up (a washed-rind Winzer Kase from Switzerland) and finally, the World Champion – the aforementioned lowfat Gouda.

As hundreds cheered for the Dutch judge as he hefted his native country’s wheel of cheese above his shoulders (the actual cheesemaker won’t accept his medal until an April banquet in Milwaukee), the wizards both in front of and behind the curtains – the volunteers, the B Teamers, and the rest of the judging crew – all took a moment to stand and smile, satisfied with another year of finding the big cheese. Well done, crew. See you in 2014.

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Bacon Supper

As if we didn’t already know that bacon makes everything better, the folks at the Sonoma Valley Cheese Conference this week set out to take my favorite food group to a whole new level.

Bacon at a cheese conference, you ask? Yes, ma’am. After spending three days talking, breathing and eating nothing but cheese with nearly 100 of the top movers and shakers in the American artisan cheese community, we were all ready to experience a different level on the food pyramid. I suppose we could have had a salad, but really, who needs rabbit food when bacon is on the menu?

To prove my point, Sheana Davis, founder and owner of The Epicurean Connection in downtown Sonoma, hosted a Bacon Supper as the parting gift to her cheese conference attendees this evening. In attendance was Ari Weinzweig who wrote the book – yes, literally – on bacon. It’s called Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon and features stories of pork bellies, hush puppies, rock n’ roll music and bacon fat mayonnaise.

While Ari entertained us with bacon trivia (Q: What was the title of people who once shepherded hogs from farm to market? A: Drovers), chefs Duskie Estes and John Stewart, the husband and wife proprietors of Zazu Restaurant + Farm and Bovolo Restaurant in Sonoma County, and owners of Black Pig Meat Company, prepared a four course meal featuring their Black Pig Bacon.

All of Black Pig Meat Co.’s pork is sourced from Pure Country Pork, a sustainable hog operation certified by Food Alliance. The pigs are a heritage breed, raised naturally and allowed to roam on pasture. As Duskie says: “We like to think the pigs really only have one bad day.”

Duskie and John have risen to fame with their Black Pig Bacon, which is dry cured with brown sugar and smoked with real applewood in a process that takes nearly a month. This is compared to most supermarket mass-produced bacons, which are wet cured and injected with liquid smoke in a process that takes less than a day. The difference in taste is remarkable. Black Pig Bacon is salty, smoky and sweet, and its flavor resonated in each of the dishes.

Our first dish was a Bacon Terrine, prepared by Chef Antonio Ghilarducci of The Depot Hotel in Sonoma, paired with Delice de la Vallee cheese and bacon brown sugar jam, prepared by Sheana Davis of The Epicurean Connection.

Three words: Best. Appetizer. Ever.

Next was a roasted brussel sprout and Black Pig Bacon salad with almonds, shaved Lucca, a mild alpine Italian-style cheese made by North Bay Curds and Whey in Tomales, and extra virgin olive oil from Tallgrass Ranch in Sonoma.

Nancy and Tony Lilly, makers of Tallgrass Ranch olive oil, happened to be sitting across the table from me (that’s Nancy, standing up, below). Their farm is on a ridge in the Sonoma Valley overlooking the San Francisco Bay. They began planting their olive grove in 1998 and today hand-harvest enough olives to send between 40 and 100 gallons to market every year.

While I had olive oil producers on one side, on my other side sat Alec Stefansky, brew master at Uncommon Brewers in Santa Cruz. Alec had brought his Bacon Brown Ale – yes, beer infused with bacon. It turns out he had just finished up packing 257 cases of this brand-new beer, which shipped out of the brewery last week and is headed to distribution in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. (Maybe we can smuggle some into Wisconsin).

Next up was the main course. Brace yourselves, bacon lovers: the menu consisted of smoky baby back ribs, accompanied by backyard collards and bacon, cowboy beans and bacon, fingerling and bacon fat aioli potato salad and bacon, and Roelli Red Rock Cheese (from Wisconsin!) cornbread. Let’s break it down in pictures, shall we?

First: ribs, cooked so slowly and amazingly that the meat fell off the bone

Second: backyard collard greens. I have never cared for collards and now I know why: I’ve never had them prepared properly with bacon. For a northern girl who views green food with suspicion, I had seconds and thirds of these babies

Next: cowboy beans — a little on the spicy side, but once they mixed in with all the other food on my plate, felt right at home

And, of course: fingerling and bacon fat aioli potato salad

Finally: bacon and Roelli Red Rock cornbread. Yum!

Put it all together and it looked like this!

For dessert, we had not one, but three amazing treats. First was a bacon and currant rum gelato, paired side-by-side with Sheana’s Creme de Fromage gelato, which tasted even better than cheesecake.

And then, we had a one-of-a-kind “PB & C” chicharron peanut butter cup, made with fried pig skins, crumbled into a peanut butter cup. Here are the chefs themselves, with their amazing chocolate creations:

A huge thank you to Sheana Davis, Duskie Estes and John Stewart of the Black Pig Meat Co., Ari Weinzweig of Zingerman’s and all the folks who prepped and cleared dishes for what was one of the best meals of our lives. Can’t wait until next year’s Sonoma Valley Cheese Conference!

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2012 World Championship Cheese Contest

Brace yourselves, Wisconsin. More than 2,500 cheeses are coming to Madison for the World Championship Cheese Contest in March. Are you ready?

In good news, the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association is ready to roll. They’ve been hosting the World Contest for decades, and have a streamlined process of receiving, sorting, spitting, evaluating and awarding cheeses down to a science. That’s a good thing, because this year, a record-breaking 2,503 entries from 24 nations around the world were entered.

All cheeses will be judged between March 5-7, with viewing open to the public during daytime hours at the Monona Terrace. The real shindig, however, will happen the evening of Wednesday, March 7, when the public is invited to attend an exclusive tasting of more than 20 international and Wisconsin cheeses, and witness the final round of judging, live and in person. Tickets for “An Evening at the World Championship Cheese Contest” are $25 and are going fast. Buy yours now at www.cheesecontest.com because this event WILL sell out.

This year, several new nations have entered cheese into the contest, including India, Romania, Estonia and Croatia. They’ll join the returning nations of Argentina, Australia, Austria, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany,  Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States.

Forty international judges will work from Monday, March 5 through noon on Wednesday, March 7 to sniff, taste and examine each entry, working in teams of two.  The top three scoring cheeses and butters in each class will earn gold, silver and bronze medals, respectively.

Each two-person judging team pairs a U.S. judge with an international expert.  This year, judges hail from Argentina, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, joining 20 judges from 13 states in the U.S.

More than 250 dairy industry volunteers — including yours truly — will provide support as judges work through more than 50,000 pounds of cheese and butter entries. I know I’m looking forward to my official “B-Team” ball cap again this year. Hey – there has to be a perk to hauling heavy boxes of cheese to judging tables all day, right?

It’s important to note that the World Championship Cheese Contest is a technical evaluation of cheese entries, using an objective measure of cheese defects to select the products in each class that best exemplify perfection for a cheese variety. The highest scoring cheeses and butters earn a gold medal, with silver and bronze medals awarded to second and third place finishers in each class.

The Contest is open between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Monday, March 5 and Tuesday, March 6 in the Exhibit Hall of the Monona Terrace Convention Center in Madison, Wis.  First round judging will be completed Wednesday, March 7 from 9:00 a.m. to noon.

This Championship Round, set for 7 p.m. during the Wednesday, March 7 public event, will be broadcast as a live, video-streamed program on the WCMA website.  In addition, contest results and digital images will be posted on the website throughout the competition.  Visit www.worldchampioncheese.org for complete contest coverage.

In 2010, cheesemaker Cedric Vuille from Formagerie de La Brevine in the tiny village of La Brevine, Switzerland, was named World Champion in the Championship Round for his Le Gruyere Switzerland. The Swiss cheeses have been popular, often winning the World title. A U.S. World Champion is long overdue. Fingers crossed 2012 is our year!

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Birthday Sheep

Turning 40 years old isn’t so bad when you’re surrounded by your favorite people, especially when those favorite people happen to live on a sheep dairy and it’s lambing season.

Last Wednesday was my big 4-0, so the hubby and I trekked to Hidden Springs Creamery near Westby to hang out with Dean and Brenda Jensen and their 350 sheep for the day. Brenda had hinted last fall my birthday would conveniently fall during prime lambing season, and really, who doesn’t want to spend their 40th birthday in a barn surrounded by newborn bleating lambs? Hello, dream trip!

We arrived late afternoon, just in time for transporting the 11 lambs born that morning to an Amish neighbor’s farm, as Brenda had run out of clean stalls (this occasionally happens when you have 275 moms giving birth to an average of twins in a 30-day period). Another 75 ewes will lamb in May, giving Brenda a longer milking season, and thus more milk to make cheese later into the season.

How do you transport newborn lambs, you ask? You pick them up from their stalls, carry them to the farm pick-up, carefully place them in tubs in the cab, and carry the extras on your lap. It’s amazing how warm, snuggly and quiet a newborn lamb is – I think the one I was holding in my lap for the 3-mile ride may have actually fallen asleep after it pooped on me.

After returning to the farm, it was time for milking. Greg and Dave are the Jensens’ evening milkers, and they’re pretty good at what they do. Here’s a look at milking sheep:

The Jensens are currently milking about 150 ewes, which takes just a little over an hour in their new double 10 Swedish parlor, a huge improvement over their home-made milking station they used the first five years they were on the farm.

After milking, we took a tour of the lambing facilities. The lambs start their lives in the nursery, born in straw pens, and then are moved to bigger pens as they age. On March 28, most of them will be sold at market – just in time for Easter dinner – and the Jensen farm will be a much quieter place.

The ewes still waiting to give birth, meanwhile, are so fat and fluffy that they look like caricature sheep – you know, the ones that came with your Little People Play Farm set? They’re all wool, with short stick legs, kind of like this:

The Jensens’ farm is absolutely breathtaking. Situated in the heart of Amish country, it’s all hills, fences and pastures. Their morning milker is an amish neighbor, hence the buggy in the photo.

After morning milking, the evening’s and morning’s milk are combined, gravity fed into a stainless stell tank on wheels, and driven about 40 feet to the farm’s creamery, where it is again gravity-fed into the farm’s cheese plant, where Brenda makes cheese about four days a week. Here’s a glimpse at the milk transportation process:

We didn’t stick around to make cheese with Brenda in the morning – I’ve made cheese with her a couple of times before, once with my daughter, so we said goodbye to the Jensens and rolled down the driveway, although not without saying goodbye to the barn cats and Augustus Burdock Jensen, the farm dog.

Many, many thanks to Brenda and Dean for your hospitality, laughter and kindness in helping me celebrate the big 4-0! It couldn’t have been any better.

Photos by Uriah Carpenter, copyright 2012.

cheeseunderground gouda, hollands family farm, marieke gouda, Wisconsin cheese, Wisconsin dairy

Holland’s Family Farm Looks to Expand

One of Wisconsin’s best-loved farmstead cheesemakers thought building a new cheese factory, a 300-cow dairy farm and farmstead retail store with an agri-tourism focus would be welcomed by their entire local community. They thought wrong.

Holland’s Family Cheese’s Marieke and Rolf Penterman, along with their five young children, are facing opposition and open hostility from a very small but vocal group of Thorp residents, who argue a “factory farm” within city limits will lead to water contamination, air and soil pollution, and an increased risk of children developing asthma from the dust and odor of a working dairy farm.

Last week, Holland’s Family Cheese company members appeared before the City of Thorp Planning Zoning Commission to ask for a re-zoning of 100 acres on the edge of Thorp’s city limits off Highway 29.

The Pentermans have dreams of expanding and relocating their “Marieke Gouda” cheese factory from its current rural location to a more visitor-friendly parcel on the main highway. The proposal calls for building a new 300-cow freestall barn on the highway, which would provide milk for the family’s authentic Dutch Gouda, winner of dozens of national and international awards.

The good news: the Planning and Zoning commission unanimously voted to recommend approval of the project to the City Council, with more than 100 people attending the local meeting. While some testified in opposition, most testified in favor.

The bad news: unfounded accusations pertaining to everything from the Pentermans’ immigrant status, to whether they shop locally, to the cleanliness of their current 850-cow dairy have been floating amongst the community for weeks. These negative rumors have hurt the Pentermans, who until now, felt like they were accepted members of the Thorp community.

“Never did we expect that this would cause this kind of situation,” Marieke says. “All these kinds of misleading rumors not only hurt us as a business, but also the whole dairy industry.”

Marieke is asking Holland’s Family Cheese supporters to post positive comments on both the City of Thorp and Thorp Chamber Facebook sites, as both sites are now filled with extremely negative – and sometimes, blatantly false – comments regarding the Pentermans and their proposal. “If anyone has any bright ideas or suggestions as to how to help this situation, please let us know,” Marieke said.

Cheese Underground supports Holland’s Family Cheese, recognizes their importance to the Wisconsin dairy industry, and has witnessed first hand their dedication to operating a top-notch, clean dairy farm and Grade A cheese plant, both in complete compliance with Wisconsin’s strict dairy regulations.

Let’s hope a vocal majority in favor of a new Holland’s Family Cheese cheese factory and agri-tourism-focused dairy farm now takes the floor and allows the Pentermans to disseminate the facts of their new family farmstead operation, so it may be judged on its merits, and not on rumors.

cheeseunderground cheese, fundraising, Sarah Kowal, specialty shop, Wisconsin cheese

WeatherVane Creamery

Spunky people inspire me, and Sarah Kowal is just about the spunkiest person I’ve ever met.

Sarah first called me a couple of months ago, announcing she was working hard to open a specialty cheese shop in River Falls, Wisconsin. Yes, that River Falls – a thriving metropolis of 15,000 people. Big sigh.

Trying hard not to yawn, and instead thinking this was my requisite “call of the week” from a crazy person with a crazy idea who wanted me to magically help them achieve their dream, I politely listened. This caller did seem a little more enthusiastic than the usual suspects, and she did actually have a business plan and numbers to back up her dream.

Then she called me again. And again. And again. And by the fourth phone call, I really started to like Sarah Kowal. Because really, how many people are passionate enough to start a specialty food shop and cafe in a town of 15,000 people, and where winter is the predominant season?

That’s why I smiled when Sarah, who is unfortunately faced with low capital and low collateral, announced she is launching an ambitious Internet campaign to raise $100,000 in 32 days to launch her dream, called WeatherVane Creamery. As a Wisconsin-only specialty shop and café featuring farmstead, artisan and specialty cheeses, as well as organic, small batch churned scooped ice cream, gourmet sandwiches, WeatherVane Creamery “will celebrate all things Wisconsin.”

You have to give her credit, the girl’s got spunk.

Don’t believe me? View the video she produced for the crowd fundraising site, indiegogo.com and then tell me this girl’s not going to either succeed, or die trying.

So what inspires a twenty-something gal to embark on this path? It’s a bit of a long and windy story, but I’ll try to sum it up for you:

Sarah lived in River Falls 10 years ago as a student at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls where she earned her Bachelors of Science in Horticulture. Yes, Horticulture. During that time, she worked at Whole Earth Grocery and began to appreciate the local business community on Main Street. In fact, she says River Falls is where she got her first taste of running a business (unless you count the paper route when she was 11 or selling donuts at her dad’s auctions at age 10).

From there, she moved on to greener pastures (or so she thought) to take a job in Chicago for the largest horticultural company in the world. That didn’t pan out as well as she thought it would, so after a year or so, so she became a store manager for Starbucks on the commuter train line in Palatine, Illinois.

Selling coffee on a train was where she found her calling. Starbucks rewarded her for being a leader in fiscal responsibility, employee development, customer service and community involvement. Eventually she made her way to Portland, Oregon, where she was hired to expand a natural foods co-op. She developed systems and teams for two stores and connected with farmers. Last March, she found herself in a position to create another new chapter in her life, and entrepreunership was calling.

“After recalling with great fondness the wonderful things from River Falls, I packed up my trusty sidekick and set out on an epic journey across the country that began on Easter Day to come home and put down some deep roots,” Sarah says. “What started out as an idea to open a coffee shop has evolved and expanded to become a celebration of all things I missed during my 10 years away from my home state.”

She says part of WeatherVane Creamery’s mission is to provide the community with a local business that is smart and quirky. She describes the shop as an “iconic Wisconsin destination store that successfully combines and appeals to traditional sensibilities with a hip and modern feel.”

If successful, Kowal aims to open WeatherVane Creamery on April 1, just in time for National Grilled Cheese Day on April 12. Want to be part of her project? Contribute just $1 or more on indiegogo.com, and you can say you helped the spunky girl achieve her dream.

cheeseunderground american originals, artisan, Brick, cheddar, Colby, Joe Widmer, Widmer's Cheese Cellars, Wisconsin, Wisconsin cheese, wisconsin originals

Widmer’s Brick & Colby: Wisconsin Originals

Brick and Colby: perhaps two of the most underrated cheeses in America. Some folks call them boring. Others simply write them off as commodities. After all, Colby is really just Mild Cheddar, right? And blocks of Cheddar sell on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, along with cattle, corn and cotton. So why should these cheeses even be considered interesting, much less blog-worthy?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you three reasons: 1) Joe Widmer,  2) Joe Widmer, and 3) Joe Widmer.

Every once in a while, I teach a class on what I call “Wisconsin Classics.” Attendance is usually down because people note what cheeses we’ll be eating, proceed to yawn, and then wait to sign up for the next month’s class on American Originals. But the truth of the matter is that both Brick and Colby are indeed American Originals, as both were invented in Wisconsin in the 1800s.

Today, there’s no one in Wisconsin making better Brick and Colby than Widmer’s Cheese Cellars in Theresa. To the skeptics who call Brick and Colby “bland,” I challenge you to taste Joe Widmer’s Mild Brick and Authentic Colby and not call these cheeses anything but artisan and full-flavored.

Fifty years ago, you might have known more than a dozen Joe Widmer-types, all crafting authentic stirred-curd Colby in little cheese plants across Wisconsin. That’s because until the 1970s, by law, Colby was required to have an open texture, meaning the curds could not be tightly pressed. This allowed a more milky, dairy flavor to develop, and depending on the cultures used and cheesemaker who crafted it, a flavor all its own.

That all changed in the 1970s, when lobbying from the state’s ginormous Cheddar makers resulted in Wisconsin statutes being changed to allow Colby to have “a closed body,” the same as Mild Cheddar. That allowed big cheese plants to make more Mild Cheddar and label it as both Mild Cheddar and Colby, thereby accessing two market shares with the same cheese. Two years ago, I did some research on this very topic and wrote a post called The Colby Conundrum, which resulted in a flurry of anonymous hate mail from what I suspect are some of the state’s biggest Cheddar makers, and which explains why today, many people unfortunately still consider Colby to just be Mild Cheddar.

The USDA doesn’t even take Colby seriously. It lumps it with Monterey Jack in the “Other American Types” cheese category when reporting annual production. Luckily, the folks at the Wisconsin Agricultural Statistics Service do appreciate it a bit more. Their stats show Colby cheese production exceeded 100 million pounds for a number of years in the 1970s, and even approached 200 million pounds in the mid 1980s.

Joe Widmer is good at putting that number in perspective. During Colby’s peak years, Joe says it accounted for almost 20 percent of the state’s total production of American–type cheeses, and for more than 10 percent of Wisconsin’s total cheese production. That’s pretty significant.

Colby production has been on the decline since the mid ’80s, both in terms of total production and in terms of its importance in Wisconsin’s cheese production picture. In 2000, Wisconsin produced 86.4 million pounds of Colby, or less then half the level of the mid ’80s. And today, at least according to my research, there are only three cheesemakers left making authentic stirred-curd, non-pressed Colby: Joe Widmer at Widmer’s Cheese Cellars in Theresa; Tony Hook in Mineral Point; and Carr Cheese Factory in Cuba City.

Most others are simply making a stirred-curd Mild Cheddar with a closed texture and labeling it as Colby. You can tell the difference pretty easily – the next time you buy Colby in a store, check to see if it has pin-prick holes in the body. If it does, it’s authentic. If not, it’s likely Mild Cheddar being labeled as Colby.

Brick cheese, like Colby, is another Wisconsin Original. It was created in 1877 by John Jossi, a Swiss immigrant who was running his own Wisconsin cheese factory by the time he was 14 years old. Much like Jossi, Widmer, a third generation cheesemaker, has been making cheese since he was a teenager, and Brick is one of his specialties.

Widmer crafts about 360,000 pounds of Brick cheese a year, using the same open vats in the 12,000 square-foot facility that his grandfather bought in 1922. And he still uses the same well-worn bricks his grandfather used to press the whey from the cheese. In fact, he’s credited as being the only cheesemaker in the country to continue to use real bricks as part of the make procedure of his Brick cheese.

After pressing, Joe removes the bricks and places the cheeses in a brine solution to take on salt. He also makes a German-Style Brick, a washed-rind “stinky cheese” soaked in a solution to take on bacterial cultures. This cheese is cured in a “warm room” – about 70 degrees – where the bacteria works its magic and is then “smear ripened” with a top-secret Widmer mixture of brine and whey.

“Most people don’t even know what real Brick is,” says Joe. This alone drives his mission to craft the real deal and share with cheese lovers everywhere – and he does mean everywhere, including his very own dinner table. “A Wisconsin cheesemaker can spend a lifetime perfecting his craft,” Joe says,  “much of it spent resisting the urge to eat all the cheese.”