Cheese Wizards

There are people who would rather die than give up chocolate, and there are those who can’t imagine a day without television. For me, a life without cheese is simply not worth living. How can you get through the day without a dense bit of manchego, a smear of Humboldt Fog, or a downy shaving of Grana Padano? Why on earth would you have people over for dinner, if not as an excuse to stand around a platter of new cheeses and say, “Wow, try that one”? The mysteries of cheese compel me. Gorgonzola tastes like one thing when piled on a cold slice of pear, and a completely different (and rather malodorous) thing when melted onto a thin-crust pizza. How can simple cow’s milk be turned into radically different cheeses like cheddar, blue, and Camembert?

I often wonder if my love of cheese comes from our neighboring state, where at every road stop on the way to and from college, a cheese store beckoned. I have many foggy memories of the Cheese Pavilion in Neillsville and odd pictures of me with Chatty Belle the Talking Cow. That’s Wisconsin, nearly drunk on the love of cheese, and happy to admit it. Yet there is a movement afoot—one that might lead to a smackdown over the very hearts and minds of cheese lovers everywhere and the highly coveted title of “America’s Dairyland.”

Cheese making in the U.S. is as old as the European immigrants who traveled here with their techniques. As they settled around the country, they began producing cheeses from their homeland. Italians brought the recipes for mozzarella and provolone, the English gave us an American version of cheddar, newly arrived French produced their Bries and Camemberts, German-Americans went on making Limburger and Muenster, and the Swiss, well—you know. Until the mid-1800s, all American-produced cheeses were farmstead cheeses—as, indeed, were all cheeses everywhere—handmade with milk exclusively from the cheese maker’s own animals. As cheese became a successful product at home and abroad, and with more automated forms of year-around agriculture, making use of silos, modern cooling trucks, and cooperative creameries, food factories sprang forth from the land to make cheese in bulk. By the turn of the last century, farmstead cheeses were becoming a thing of the past.

Wisconsin, with its rolling hills and wide pastures, drew a large share of northern European dairy farmers and cheese makers. The first state to grade its cheeses for quality, it quickly became the center of the national dairy industry, producing about five hundred million pounds of cheese per year by 1945. Today the state widely known as “America’s Dairyland” produces more than two billion pounds of cheese each year from the milk of more than a million cows. It would seem that residents of the state with more licensed cheese makers than any other should feel safe in their identity, secure enough to call themselves “cheeseheads” and wear those ridiculous foam hats to sporting events.

But anyone who watched this year’s Super Bowl, wearing that foam hat or not, watched what amounts to a bigger insult than cow tipping. It was a TV commercial featuring sunbathing bovines prancing in the California sun, with the tagline, “Great cheese comes from happy cows. Happy cows come from California.” Although this campaign has been around for some time, when it aired during a Super Bowl commercial break, it basically amounted to a gauntlet thrown.

It seems California has its sights set on claiming the title of “America’s Dairyland.” The Happy Cows campaign is part of a long-term strategy to shift American dairy consumers’ thinking away from Midwestern fields and toward coastal pastures. Faced with a milk surplus in 1982, the California Milk Advisory Board approached the pointy-heads at Stanford University for help. After extensive study, they found that everybody loves cheese, and that cheese making had huge profit potential for the state. California milk producers took the cue, and between 1982 and 2004, statewide cheese production increased 609 percent, with a projected two billion pounds being produced in 2005. What’s up, Cali? Aren’t you happy enough being the state of towheads and surfers? You already have David Hasselhoff and Robert Mondavi—can’t you leave the Midwest any national props?

The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board isn’t scared. It has launched a campaign aimed at reminding Wisconsinites to be proud of their heritage, but is that the right fire to light? One very successful part of the California’s plan is to nurture the growing artisanal and farmstead cheese producers. Through well-targeted public relations, the stories of these specialty cheese makers have received tons of media attention and a national following. Just check out the well-stocked cheese case at any Kowalski’s, Lund’s, or Byerly’s and count how many Cali cheeses you find.

True, specialty cheese makers don’t fuel the industry. Processed cheeses made by big factories are what the masses buy and eat daily. Be assured that the California Milk Board also has a plan to woo such companies (including our own Land O’Lakes) to bring their business to California, but as the board itself has stated, it’s all about image. Since the Happy Cows campaign started airing, cheese with the “Real California Cheese” seal has achieved national distribution from Costco and Kroger, with expanded distribution at Wal-Mart and Safeway. I think the Wisconsin Milk Board might be missing the signs: The future is knocking and California is trampling over Wisconsin to answer the door.

There has never been a more food-centric time in America than now. The food revolution has created a whole generation of people who care about what food means, where it comes from, and why they should eat it. With all the national attention paid to their artisanal cheeses, the “great cheese” association will trickle down to the big yellow blocks of “American” cheese as well. California is trying to give its cheese a pedigree, thereby providing people with what would seem to be an educated choice rather than the same old blind pick. The state might have had some experience in this before, with a wine industry that took the laughable “American wine” category and verily crushed European expectations.

Don’t get me wrong: I love California cheeses. I pay well for Humboldt Fog because, as an aged goat cheese covered with a fine dusting of ash, it delivers a creamy, sharp flavor I can’t find in anything else. But I don’t subscribe to the fact that it’s better just because it’s from California. I know there are equally amazing and even better cheeses within a short drive of the Twin Cities. For example, LoveTree Farmstead in Grantsburg, Wisconsin, just over the state line, ages its goat cheese in caves on cedar boards. The result is a full-bodied cheese with a hint of the northwoods. The winner of the 2004 Best of Show title from the American Cheese Society competition was Sid Cook’s Gran Canaria of Carr Valley Cheese in La Valle, Wisconsin, about a three-hour drive from here.

This isn’t a time to reflect on heritage and muse dreamily on the past. Okay, so Wisconsin was the birthplace of Colby, but have you tried California’s award-winning Fiscalini San Joaquin Gold, a farmstead cheese that has a mellow richness and grates like a dream? This is a time to celebrate the beauty of true-blue Wisconsin cheeses while encouraging innovation from young cheese makers wherever they might live. Wisconsin cheeseheads should be focused on creating new generations of cheese eaters who understand why they should choose Wisconsin cheese—because it’s excellent and beautifully crafted, not because it comes from “America’s Dairyland.” Seeking out and drawing attention to its high-quality small producers is one of the best ways Wisconsin can equal the call.