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GOURMET NEWS MAY 2016 www.gourmetnews.com NEWS & NOTES 8 Wisconsin Dairyland Continued from PAGE 1 compared to sweaty gym socks, Lim- burger's appeal among Americans today is generally limited to the adventurous eaters who enjoy a challenge, but it was once a very popular cheese among the German immigrants who settled in the Upper Midwest. In the late 19th and early 20th cen- turies, Chalet Cheese Co- op was one of many American makers of Lim- burger cheese that turned out millions of pounds of cheese a year and sold it as a sandwich cheese for working men. "Now we make 600,000 pounds of Limburger, and that's enough to satisfy every- body," Olson said. "Ours, it smells barny, but it's not like the days when you were in high school and had a gym locker.... All those things you've heard about how Limburger smells are true. If you put a piece in the refrigerator, next time you open it, you'll know it's there." As Americans' tastes in cheese have changed over the years, Chalet Cheese Co-op and its 19 employees have turned to making specialty cheeses that appeal to modern tastes, using the milk from 19 co-op member farms – 100,000-pounds each day – to make critically regarded Baby Swiss along with that 600,000 pounds of Limburger, 40-pound full-fat Swiss blocks and a few different styles of Brick cheese under its Country Castle and Deppeler's brands as well as private la- bels for other Limburger cheese vendors. The farmers co-op was started in 1885 by five farmers who started out making Swiss cheese in Green County, Wiscon- sin, known as the state's Little Switzer- land, but soon changed to Limburger as a way to compete better with the 200 other cheese factories also making Lim- burger and Swiss cheese in the area, Olson said. From the start, the plants in Green County were turning out Swiss cheese for the industry until Kraft's require- ments for its Swiss cheese conflicted with Wisconsin's state laws defining the identity for Swiss. Kraft wanted its Swiss cheese formed in blocks; Wisconsin law required wheels. Kraft took its Swiss cheese contracts elsewhere. "Kraft went to other states. Wisconsin here, we didn't listen to the customer, so we lost the business," Olson said. "You may think it's the best cheese, but if your customer doesn't want it, it goes down.... You have to listen to what the customer wants – that's the whole thing." Chalet Cheese turned to making Baby Swiss, which didn't have a Wisconsin standard, in the late 1970s to make up the decreasing demand for Limburger. Today, Olson is only the creamery's third plant manager since the 1930s, and he and his team are processing 140,000 pounds of milk a day to make cheese five days a week, starting at about 2:00 in the morning and finishing by about 3:00 in the afternoon, and he's adamant that Chalet Cheese Co-op is dedicated to making cheeses that meet and exceed both its customers' expectations and the needs of the market. "Our Baby Swiss wins awards and is the best Baby Swiss in the world," he said. Indeed, the list of Chalet Cheese Co-op's awards fills a sin- gle-spaced page topped by the company's Best of Class award from the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association's 2016 World Cheese Championship Contest for its 40-pound Baby Swiss block made by Mike Nelson. The Country Castle Baby Swiss is firm, a little chewy with a sweet nutty flavor. Chalet makes its Baby Swiss with full fat (whole) milk and cheese cultures that allow the cheese to keep its natural sweetness for five to six months. Eyes are well developed, plentiful, and kept at about thumb-size to please customers who prefer a cheese that can be sliced by high-speed equipment into slices with consistent weight, according to Olson. "With the extra fat, it really goes good on hash browns," he said. "Ours is one of the unique ones because full fat gives it such a creamy mouth feel." I visited Chalet Cheese Co-op as part of a media tour sponsored by the Wis- consin Milk Marketing Board, which is funded by dairy check-off fees mandated by federal law. Under that law, cow dairies pay a 15-cent tax on each hun- dred pounds of milk they produce. Of that, a dime comes back to Wisconsin to be used for dairy research and promo- tion. WMMB uses some of that money to host frequent tours for retailers and dis- tributors who take the time to come and see how the cheese they sell is made, said Heather Porter Engwall, the organi- zation's Director of National Product Communications. She stood aside as our group of food editors from national mag- azines and online portals from across the country filed out of the creamery into a chilly Wisconsin spring and onto a tour bus for a trip down two-lane county roads that wound between rolling hills furred with the stubble of last season's hay and silage crops to Emmi Roth, where Kirsten Jaeckle, Emmi Roth's Market- ing Manager and a member of its founding family, and cor- porate chef Claire Menck waited with a lunch that in- cluded the chance to taste the Emmi Roth Grand Cru Sur- choix that just won the 2016 World Cham- pion award from the WCMA. Be- hind us, Olson waved us off with, "Help yourself to cheese. We've got plenty of it." Emmi Roth, on the other hand, has al- ready sold out that championship Grand Cru Surchoix, much of it to a few spe- cialty retailers, news that was causing heartburn across Wisconsin to cus- tomers who'd been loving the cheese be- fore it got famous. The wheel that's sitting in Emmi Roth's test kitchen is a majestic maroon, and while you might think that a world championship cheese would be as snooty as the high school quarterback who just threw 38 yards for the game-winning touchdown at home- coming, Grand Cru Surchoix is actually the class good-time girl – you're more likely to get your hands on her if you've got some cash in your pockets, but you don't regret the expense because under- neath that gorgeous rind, she's creamy and pliant and tastes a little like orange blossoms. Like Surchoix, Emmi Roth has an Old World heritage and some New World moxie. Oswald Roth started making cheese in Switzerland by 1863. His son, Otto, came to the U.S. in 1911, and the family eventually founded Roth Käse in the rolling hills of Wisconsin to make cheese from locally-sourced milk ob- tained from family farmers. In 2009, Roth Käse was acquired by the Switzer- land cheesemaker and milk processor Emmi Group and now offers Emmi's range of traditional Swiss varieties as well as the American Originals originally made by Roth Käse. It's the clover and prairie grasses in the lush Wisconsin pastures that are responsible for the rich, complex flavors of the Roth cheeses, Jaeckle said. "Access to the highest qual- ity milk is vital in making award-win- ning cheese," she said. Emmi Roth operates two plants and makes more than 50 varieties. The Monroe, Wiscon- sin, plant we visited employs 65 people who make 15 to 20 varieties from 350,000 pounds of milk a year, process- ing cheese from 10 p.m. at night five or six days a week until cheesemaking is done for the day at about 2 p.m., when the plant gets a final cleanup and then a little rest until work starts all over again the next day. The plant also uses four ro- botic assistants that wash the cheeses tirelessly as they are aged, combining that with an enormous amount of hand labor to handle the cheeses frequently because there's no way to automate cer- tain processes in a plant that crafts cheese from so many different recipes, Jaeckle said. "There's nothing like hands and eyes on the products," added Qual- ity Director Jeff McSherry, who's part of an entire team of experts in both the technical and aesthetic standards who are constantly evaluating the Emmi Roth cheeses as they age. The Surchoix starts as a wheel of Emmi Roth Grand Cru, an Alpine-style cheese made in copper vats in the style of smear-ripened European mountain cheeses. As it ages, each lot is tasted fre- quently, and the very best wheels are set aside for additional aging to become Continued on PAGE 9

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