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OCG Show Daily Monday, June 11, 2018 1 6 Family Values Make Cheese Artisanal By Lorrie Baumann Though it doesn't appear on its Nutrition Facts label, family is often the ingredient that helps define an artisanal cheese. And like the cheeses themselves, these fami- lies wouldn't be what they are without a culture to bind them. A New Generation Builds on Long Family Tradition at Springside Cheese Springside Cheese's Keith, Nathan and Bradd Hintz are the newest generation of cheesemakers in a Wisconsin family tra- dition that goes back to where their great- grandfather Edward Winter started mak- ing cheese around 1910. He passed the tradition down through his family to the brothers' grandfather, Eugene Winter. Their father, Wayne Hintz, first learned how to make cheese in Krakow, Wisconsin at the Krakow Cheese Factory run by their great-uncle, Paulus Winter. Wayne also worked for his father-in-law, Eugene Winter, at Elmwood Cheese Factory in Little Suamico, Wisconsin, before buying Springside Cheese in 1973, with help from Eugene. "Like Edward getting his kids into their own cheese factories, our grandfa- ther Eugene actually purchased the facto- ry for my mom and dad, which was exact- ly what his dad did for him," says Nathan, who now handles all of the production operations and regulatory compliance for the business. "It gave them a start." Keith, who's the oldest of the trio of brothers, is now the President of Springside Cheese, while Bradd, the youngest, is the company's Director of Information Technology. Their father, Wayne Hintz, remains the company's Head Cheesemaker. "We started helping from the age we could walk," Keith says. "I worked through my first year of college, 1991, and then I left the business until 1994. I came back in 1994 as the business man- ager and got my cheesemaker's license." Keith then left the business' day-to-day operations in 1997 to pursue his own career, mostly in the realm of information technology, but eventually returned when his father decided that he was ready to step back from the creamery. "For Keith and I, growing up in and around business, we always had a desire to be directly involved in running a busi- ness," Nathan says. "I built my career in IT as a software engineer. Dairy was always in the back of your mind. You always think about what's going on in the industry, how things are progressing. When we were presented with the option, we made the decision that we wanted to try and carry on the family business." "Even when you're not involved in the day-to-day operations, you're always following the news. You're always stay- ing in touch with the business," Keith adds. "It was just a natural fit at the time to come back." The brothers are now taking the creamery away from its history as a pro- ducer of commodity cheddars and are now producing an increasing amount of artisanal cheeses. They say that direction was necessary to preserve Springside Cheese's economic viability along with their family tradition of small-batch cheesemaking. "We make cheese the same way my father made cheese. If my grandfather came and watched, what happens in the vat is essentially what happened way back when," says Nathan. "That doesn't lend itself to the market my dad was selling to. We couldn't produce the volume that others could – our cost of production was too high. To take advan- tage of our history, and our production methods, there is now a market of people who are interested in our methods." Springside Cheese is still making hand-crafted cheddars, jacks and colby cheeses, but the new emphasis on arti- sanal cheeses has led the company toward more aged cheddars and to unique products that are conscious reflections of the landscape from which they originat- ed. For instance, Krakow, which was launched last year, was named after the cheese factory in which Wayne first learned his craft. It's a semi-soft cheese modeled after the Polish Podlaski cheese, with characteristics of a butterkäse, and it draws directly on the artisanal cheese- making lessons that Keith learned at the University of Wisconsin's Center for Dairy Research. The new approach is garnering critical acclaim, with a silver medal win this year at the International Cheese Awards for Krakow. Springside's Aged Cheddar won two silver and one bronze award at the ICA and a second- place award at the American Cheese Society's competition and judging. Springside's Cheddar curds took a sec- ond-place award, and its Colby took a third-place award at ACS as well. Italian Culture Flavors Valley Ford Cheese Joe Moreda, Jr. didn't make it to the American Cheese Society's annual meet- ing this year. He was at home at Valley Ford Cheese making cheese every day and working on the renovations for a building that's becoming the business' new retail shop. "I did go to three straight ACSs prior to the last two," he says. "ACS is a great place to network, learn and promote yourself and your business." Valley Ford Cheese was started by Joe's mother, Karen, on the Bianchi fam- ily's 640-acre dairy farm. Joe represents the fifth generation of his dairy-farming family who's been milking cattle in west- ern Sonoma County, California, since 1918. "I grew up on a dairy farm, and I worked with the family and enjoyed it, and it was a great way to grow up, learn- ing about the ag life," he says. He real- ized, though, that he didn't have the same passion for the dairy cattle themselves that he saw in his brother, Jim; his uncle and his grandfather. Then, in his senior year in high school, he started learning about another aspect of the dairy industry through an internship at Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company. "I got introduced to this whole new world of the dairy indus- try and fell in love with it," he says. "I envisioned myself graduating and work- ing in a large cheese, butter, ice cream or other dairy manufacturing plant. Throughout all four and a half years of college, I worked at the Cal Poly Creamery, where I got hands-on experi- ence making all different kinds of prod- ucts. Between learning in the classroom and working in the plant, I gained some very valuable experience and knowl- edge.... Near the end of my time at Cal Poly, I knew that my biggest passion was making cheese." He was in his junior year studying dairy science at Cal Poly when his moth- er decided that the family farm needed a new revenue stream. "Halfway through college, milk prices fell, and my mom started researching the options," Joe says. "She took a class and started mak- ing cheese, and it's grown from there." That summer, Joe went to work as an intern for Leprino Foods at the compa- ny's Grand Rapids, Michigan, mozzarel- la plant. "It was a whole different world than what I had learned previously, and at the end of the summer, I got offered a full-time job after I finished school," he says. "It would have paid pretty hefty for a 22-year-old kid." At the same time, Karen's cheese- making was going well back home at Valley Ford. "People liked our cheese, and I could tell it was a passion that she had and I had too," he says. "It didn't take a whole lot of thinking for me to turn down the Leprino offer and come home and try to build a business." Today, Karen remains the President and Founder of Valley Ford Cheese, while Joe, Jr. is the Plant Manager and has taken over the cheesemaking duties. "Outside in the dairy, my grandpa is still here working in the dairy every day." Also outside in the dairy are Joe's uncle and Jim, who graduated from Cal Poly with a degree in animal husbandry and then followed that up with an internship in New Zealand in which he learned pas- turing and grazing techniques that he's putting into practice on the farm today. "The cows have access to 640 acres of pasture year round. If it's pouring down rain, then they have the option of staying in the barns, but we typically have rela- tively mild winters in Sonoma County," Joe says. Valley Ford Cheese specializes in Italian-style cheeses: Estero Gold, Estero Gold Reserve, Highway 1, and newest is Grazin Girl. Estero Gold is the original cheese – it's an original recipe in the style of Asiago and Montasio. "That's aged about six months, a harder to semi-hard cheese that, as it ages, quite a bit of it is held over and aged for two years to become the Reserve," Joe says. "At that point, it's similar to a Parmesan Grana that's good for grating and pairs well with red wines." Highway 1 is a fontina-style cheese, typically sold at about five months. "That's a little bit of a milder cheese, a semi-soft, really good for melting," Joe says. "We sell a lot of it for foodservice, and they'll melt it on anything." Grazin Girl is a dolce-style Gorgonzola-style cheese, aged 60 days at time of sale. "It is the first cheese of ours that I developed. My mom had already developed, made and sold Estero Gold, Estero Gold Reserve and Highway 1 before I came home from college," Joe says. "It's been the hardest cheese I've ever made in my life. It's been three years in the making, but we're there.... We've been selling it locally at farmers markets and it's been flying off the shelves, so we're feeling pretty good about it." At the moment, Grazin Girl is only being sold locally, but Valley Ford has just completed an expansion of cheese plant and purchased a second cheese vat, which has provided the capacity to grow Grazin Girl to a wider market as well as opportunities to research and develop other new products. Master Cheesemaker in the Making at LaClare Family Creamery Katie Fuhrmann is planning to become her family's first Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker. She's a scion of LaClare Family Creamery, one of four children of Larry and Clara Hedrich who are involved in the family's farmstead goat operation, along with her sister Anna, who runs the farm; her brother Greg, who runs the creamery along with Katie; and her sister Jessica, who runs the retail cheese store and cafe. "My dad's the General Manager, so we all work directly with him," Katie says. "My mom is actu- ally our on-site midwife, and she is so good at it. She is phenomenal at it, and she also manages our agritourism effort, so this is a way for her to continue to teach ag, which was her career, but not have to do it inside the classroom walls." She grew up on the home farm that her parents bought in 1978. "My parents bought that farm with two goats on it, and that's where that started. They bought the farm because they wanted to give their kids the work ethic that would go along with that," she says. "They did- n't want to milk cows, and since the farm came with a couple of pet goats, Brandy and Whisky, they ended up just going with that and creating a goat dairy." Katie was introduced to cheesemak- ing in 2008. Her parents had started hav- ing cheese made from their goat milk by another cheesemaker, and they entered Evalon, their first cheese, in the U.S. Cheese Championships. Evalon was a second-place in its class. "My parents had to milk the goats, so they asked me if I would be interested in going over and get- ting the award," she says. She went to Lacrosse to attend the awards reception, sat down by herself and, by chance, sat down next to Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker Gary Grossen. "We started talking, and I said, 'This is it. I have to make cheese,'" she says. "I fell in love with the passion. It wasn't something they did. It was their life.... I left early and had to call my dad so I could tell him, 'Dad, I'm going to be a master cheesemaker.'" Her dad said that would be fine with him, so she figured that her next step would be to learn something about mak- ing cheese. She asked Saxon Creamery for an internship. "The plant manager at the time, he and I, we just hit it off right away," she says. "He let me come in and learn." By September, she was begging him for a job. "I helped out with the make. I helped out with the aging. I helped out with the packaging," she says. Eventually, she came back to the family business. LaClare Farms, as it was then, didn't yet have a creamery, so Katie started making the family's cheeses in other Wisconsin creameries. "I was kind of a gypsy for the first few years," she says. By December of 2012, the creamery had been built, and Katie was able to move in and start making cheese. Continued on Page 17