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Restaurant Daily News Marketplace Sunday, May 22, 2016 B A GUIDED TOUR THROUGH WISCONSIN DAIRYLAND By Lorrie Baumann Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker Myron Olson runs the only cheese plant in the United States that's still making Limburger cheese. Olson is very nearly that unique himself – he's only one of 60 master cheesemakers in the only state in the U.S. that requires professional cheesemakers to be licensed, which is just a first step in becoming a certified Master. Requirements also include 10 years of on-the-job experience and a three-year course of study on a specific variety of cheese. There's a 50-hour prac- tical examination between school and certification. That's five-oh – I checked. It's rigorous. Periodic recertification is required, and that means periodic inspections to ensure that once the cheesemaker has been certified as a master, he can't become complacent and let the standard drop in any way. Certifying as a Master Cheesemaker for another cheese requires another three-year course of study and another examination. Only 10 cheese- makers from across the state are eligible to start the Master Cheesemaker program each year, and there's a waiting list for entry. Among this Old School Wisconsin elite, Olson is one of the Old Schooliest. He's the only Master Cheesemaker in the U.S. who's certified for Limburger cheese. Famous for being the stinkiest of the stinky cheeses, with a natural aroma that's often compared to sweaty gym socks, Limburger's appeal among Americans today is generally limited to the adventurous eaters who enjoy a chal- lenge, 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 centuries, Chalet Cheese Co-op was one of many American makers of Limburger 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 everybody," 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 labels for other Limburger cheese ven- dors. The farmers co-op was started in 1885 by five farmers who started out making Swiss cheese in Green County, Wisconsin, known as the state's Little Switzerland, but soon changed to Limburger as a way to compete better with the 200 other cheese factories also making Limburger 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 requirements for its Swiss cheese conflicted with Wisconsin's state laws defining the iden- tity 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 busi- ness," 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 process- ing 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' expecta- tions 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 single-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 Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, which is funded by dairy check-off fees mandat- ed by federal law. Under that law, cow dairies pay a 15-cent tax on each hundred pounds of milk they produce. Of that, a dime comes back to Wisconsin to be used for dairy research and promotion. WMMB uses some of that money to host frequent tours for retailers and distribu- tors who take the time to come and see how the cheese they sell is made, said Heather Porter Engwall, the organiza- tion'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 Marketing Manager and a member of its founding family, and corporate chef Claire Menck waited with a lunch that included the chance to taste the Emmi Roth Grand Cru Surchoix that just won the 2016 World Champion award from the WCMA. Behind us, Olson waved us off with, "Help yourself to cheese. We've got plenty of it." Emmi Roth, on the other hand, has already sold out that championship Grand Cru Surchoix, much of it to a few specialty retailers, news that was causing heartburn across Wisconsin to customers who'd been loving the cheese before 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 homecoming, 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 underneath that gor- geous 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 obtained from family farmers. In 2009, Roth Käse was acquired by the Switzerland cheesemaker and milk processor Emmi Group and now offers Emmi's range of traditional Swiss vari- eties 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 quality milk is vital in making award-winning cheese," she said. Emmi Roth operates two plants and makes more than 50 varieties. The Monroe, Wisconsin, 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 robotic 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 Quality Director Jeff McSherry, who's part of an entire team of experts in both the techni- cal and aesthetic standards who are con- stantly 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 two- year-old Grand Cru Surchoix. The fourth member of the Grand Cru family, Grand Cru Private Reserve is made from heat- treated raw milk for a cheese that retains even more of the complex flavors of the pasture. Grand Cru Private Reserve has enough awards and honors to its credit to have earned its way to eminence even in this rank of the nobility. Emmi Roth's newest cheese, intro- duced just this year, is Prairie Sunset, a relaxed and undemanding cheese inspired by the French Mimolette. With sweet flavors, undertones of butter- scotch, and bright golden color, Prairie Sunset is not a cheese that requires you to think about whether or not you like it, and it will very definitely brighten up a cheese board. After a lunch that showed off a daz- zling range of Menck's culinary skills and the versatility of the Emmi Roth cheeses, we reboarded the bus for the trip to our next cheesemaker. Here and there, the occasional crow pecked along the stubble rows and dairy cows lounged in lots near their barns, barely looking up as the bus passed, swaying like Scarlett O'Hara in a hoop skirt along two-lane county roads named with letters of the alphabet rather than with numbers. The sky turned from a washed-out blue dap- pled with mares' tail clouds to a dismal gray. Streams and lakes meandered lazily past leafless trees in a landscape that began to speak more insistently of Wisconsin's glaciated prehistory, and when the bus stopped, we disembarked into a wind that had surely originated over an Arctic ice cap, and edged our way into the tiny reception area at Uplands Cheese, where Cheesemaker Andy Hatch met us at the door with plas- tic booties, hair nets and disposable lab coats. Uplands Cheese is the farmstead producer of Pleasant Ridge Reserve, one of the most highly respected cheeses made in the United States. Made only in the summer with grass-fed milk and aged up to two years, it is Hatch's interpreta- tion of traditional Alpage cheeses like Beaufort and Gruyere L'Elivaz. In some years, he also makes Rush Creek Reserve, a soft ripened cheese wrapped in spruce bark that is made only in late fall, after the Uplands cows have begun eating hay instead of the summer pasture grasses, and only if Hatch is moved to do so. A farmstead producer is one who makes cheese on the same farm where the animals that produce the milk are raised. Farmstead producers are unusual in Wisconsin, where cheesemaking is usually done in factories served by multi- ple family dairy farms, each usually with around 130 cows. Hatch and his partner, Scott Mericka, farm 300 acres here and milk 150 cows. While Hatch makes the cheese, Mericka looks after the herd. The only cows milked here were born here, and all of the milk produced on the farm is made into its cheeses. Bring any group of American farm- Continued on PAGE C