Cheese

Artisan Cheese

When we’re talking about farm to table as it pertains to cheese, we’re usually mean “artisan” cheese. Unfortunately, the term artisan has become one of the most abused words since they started referring to people like Justin Bieber as “icons”. So please excuse the mainstream marketing use of the word, and let me explain what it means to us.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines artisan as follows: “ 1: a worker who practices a trade or handicraft : craftsperson 2: one that produces something (as cheese or wine) in limited quantities often using traditional methods.”…  So, that’s a pretty cool definition. Emphasize the words  handicraft, limited quantities, and traditional methods, and I think that’s a large part of what we’re all interested in. When we use the term in our shops, we explain it to our customers as meaning cheese that’s made by small producers, in small hand-crafted batches, using original recipes. Of course that’s still a fairly loose definition, but I hope you get the idea. 

I don’t know that everyone realizes how big the cheese business is, but to fill the grocery stores, top the pizzas, finish the burritos and cheese the burgers, it takes a lot of cheese.  Last year Wisconsin was again the largest cheese producing state in the country, turning out 2.6 BILLION pounds of cheese. Yup, that’s billion, with a b.  I don’t even have one of those illustrations of slices of cheese stacked to the moon to describe how much cheese that is, but it’s a lot. And that’s only what comes from one state. To produce that much cheese, cheese making has to be done on an industrial scale, with some individual plants producing more than one million pounds of cheese per day. To manufacture cheese on this scale requires a great deal of sophisticated equipment, automation and huge facilities. The resulting product is consistent, uniform, efficient, and relatively inexpensive.

At the other end of the spectrum is our friend Chris Roelli of the Roelli Cheese Haus in Shullsburg, Wisconsin. Chris makes Dunbarton Blue, a delicious English Farmhouse-style cheddar with a hint of blue culture that’s open-air cave aged for about six months and happens to be one of our best selling cheeses. One batch of Dunbarton Blue, a day’s production, consists of 72 wheels weighing about seven pounds each. That’s just over 500 pounds of cheese. To make that, Chris hand-adds the cultures and rennet to his open vat of milk, stirs and heats it, and then waits for the curd to set. He checks the curd by putting his hand gently into the vat, lifting the curd with the palm of his hand, and looking for just the right “break” in the curd to know it has properly formed. It is then hand cut with wire harps so that the whey can begin to drain from the curd. All of the remainder of the process, including cheddaring the curd, scooping curd into the hoops, stacking the hoops, and all the steps in the cave-aging process, are done by hand, by people. The resulting product varies throughout the year, is somewhat freeform, is very labor intensive, and is relatively expensive. It’s also an epihanous moment the first time you taste it.

So that’s the difference between what we call artisan cheese, and commodity factory cheese.   Next time, we’ll look at how artisan cheese fits in to the Wisconsin farm to table scene, and the important and delicious role it plays. Cheese forward!

Peter Kordon, Head Cheese Monger, Schoolhouse Artisan Cheese

Peter Kordon is a guest contribor to The Door County Farm-to-Table Society and is Head Cheese Monger at Schoolhouse Artisan Cheese in Egg Harbor, WI