Wisconsin 🧀 is the best 🧀

Don't believe me? Read this.

Hi friends -

I should probably go into witness protection, writing this from Italy and all. But with the election just weeks away, Wisconsin is, like always, all over the news. We’ve talked about the things reporters get wrong about the Midwest before. The stereotypes, diner stories, etc. What people often get right about Wisconsin is that we’re obsessed with cheese. Unfortunately, they simultaneously get it wrong, and make it seem like we’re all just gaga for American cheese (ew). Somehow, Vermont is seen as an artisan cheese paradise, while Wisconsin is seen as overweight cheeseheads. Do we bring some of this on ourselves? No comment.

Maybe we need some better marketing to move away from the cheesehead and more toward the small-production cheesemakers making thousands of award-winning cheeses.

Anyway, I sent in my absentee ballot today, so this seemed like a good time to share an article I wrote about Wisconsin cheese a few years ago for 1843 magazine.

Covid took over the world right after I submitted, then the magazine went digital-only, so it never ran. I’ve updated the numbers, but otherwise it’s unchanged. Wisconsinites: if it seems like I’m over explaining anything, remember this was written for a British audience. Can’t wait to be home soon to stock up. 🧀

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Wisconsin, where I’m from, is known as the Dairy State. It’s our state motto, though “Cheese State” would be more appropriate. Visitors will understand why almost immediately.  At the airport you’ll see cheese for sale. Roadside billboards advertise “Wisconsin Cheese”. Every cafe, bar and restaurant has cheese on the menu. Fans at sporting events wear “cheesehead” hats – a wedge-shaped headpiece made from bright-yellow foam. Speak to a Wisconsinite and they will almost certainly ask if you’ve tasted our cheese yet, then offer up a list of where to try it. In Wisconsin, cheese is always on the brain. It’s almost an obsession.

Many in Wisconsin have childhood memories of eating cheese curds from the farmer’s market that are so fresh they squeak in your mouth – and grow up to order them on a night out. Fried cheese curds and craft beer (including a very popular ale by New Glarus Brewing named Spotted Cow) are found everywhere, from dive bars in rural towns, to upmarket cocktail bars in Madison, the state capital, where the staple snack is given a gourmet twist (pricey ten-year-aged cheddar fried in a vodka batter and served with homemade aioli). Beer and cheese soup gets us through harsh winters, and beer and cheese pairings are just as common as cheese and wine. Fine-dining dessert menus feature 15-year-aged Hook’s cheddar, a delicacy that’s rich and nutty with crunchy, caramelised pockets. We have incredible cheese shops with experts as knowledgeable as sommeliers are about wine, and we put cheese on everything, something I took for granted until my lactose intolerant boyfriend visited for the first time, eyes pained as my mother presented yet another dish laden with cheese. 

Cheese production in what is now Wisconsin goes back 175 years. Early settlers found cow farming to be more successful than crops like wheat, which depleted the soil and was eaten by chinch bugs, a pest that is common in the Midwest. As the dairy industry flourished, cheesemaking was used as a way to preserve excess milk – cheese can age while milk and butter cannot – and production drew on the heritage of those who settled there. Immigrants from Germany, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands started making cheese in Wisconsin in the 1800s, followed by the French and Scandinavians. Each wave brought different types of cheese–Swiss, mozzarella, provolone, camembert, gouda, havarti, limburger, muenster–and techniques, but all appreciated the fertile soil in Wisconsin, which affects the taste of milk. Wisconsin became known to Europeans as the place with soil most similar to what they left behind, and a community of farmers formed. 

The quality of milk in Wisconsin is what would later attract people like Errico Auricchio, an Italian cheesemaker who moved his family to America in 1979 with a dream to create the “best Italian cheeses in the United States”. He thought he could do this in New York, but on arrival discovered that the milk simply wasn’t up to par. He kept travelling west, sampling milk across the country until he reached Wisconsin. There, he found milk that was, in his own words, “unbeatable”. He went on to found BelGioioso, now one of the most famous cheese companies in the state. True to Auricchio’s Italian roots, BelGioioso makes a fantastic  parmesan, aged for 18 months on wooden shelves to give it a deep, nut-like flavour, as well as a light, buttery mascarpone Wisconsinites like to spread on bagels and mix into dips. 

Cheese became part of brand Wisconsin at the start of the 20th century. Wisconsin became the Dairy State in 1915, when it surpassed New York as the number one dairy producer in America. In the 1920s, Wisconsin became the first state to grade its cheese for quality. A decade later the department of agriculture created the “Milk Queen” program (later, Alice in Dairyland), in which a young woman is crowned as an ambassador for the dairy industry. The role still exists today. In the 1940s, legislators placed “America’s Dairyland” on licence plates. Since then promotional efforts have had a touch of the surreal. In 1964, the Wisconsin Cheese Foundation brought the world’s largest cheese (it was cheddar) to the World’s Fair in New York. It weighed 17.5 tonnes.

In 2018, the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board facilitated the creation of the world’s largest cheese platter, at South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, with a spread of more than two tonnes of cheese. Visitors to Wisconsin can purchase elaborate cheese hampers and fancy cheese knives, or T-shirts that read “Say Cheese” with the state outline of Wisconsin depicted as a block of Swiss cheese. One of my favorite possessions is a Wisconsin-shaped cheese board, which reminds me of home when living outside of the state. 

Cheese in Wisconsin is big business. There are more than 5,500 dairy farms in the state and 90% of the milk produced goes into cheesemaking. Drive for just a few minutes outside of any city and you’ll pass green pastures, big red barns and fields of black and white cows. When I visit now, I feel like I’m driving through a picture book about farmland in America. The dairy industry in Wisconsin is worth $45 billion annually. That’s four times bigger than the citrus industry in Florida and nine times more than potatoes in Idaho. Wisconsin has 129 cheese plants, which make half of all specialty cheese (and a quarter of all cheese) in America. The second biggest cheesemaking state is California, which has 42 cheese plants.

But it’s not just about quantity. Cheesemakers in Wisconsin have won more than 5,500 World Championship Cheese Awards, which is more than any other state – or country. At the 2024 awards, Wisconsin cheesemakers took home 117 awards––more than the combined total of the subsequent six highest-earning countries and states. 

This is much to the disdain of other proud cheesemaking regions. In my experience, Europeans are unaware of Wisconsin’s artisanship and Wisconsin cheese is often lumped in with “American cheese”, a creamy, processed food made from cheddar and colby, often sold in slices separated by thin leafs of plastic. In 2014, I was working in Rome for an international aid organisation when a parmesan from Wisconsin won the gold medal in the International Cheese Awards, beating several parmesans from Italy. The winning cheese was made by Sartori, a cheese company founded in Wisconsin by an Italian immigrant in 1939. Its parmesan is the most highly decorated cheese in America. “I don’t believe it,” said our office manager Antonella, when I joked that the best parmesan in the world wasn’t Italian after all. “Disgusting!” said another colleague, Giovanni, upon hearing the news. 

But when it comes to cheese, Italians and Wisconsinites have more in common than they might think. While “Made In Italy” signifies the excellence of Italian products worldwide, “Proudly Wisconsin” is stamped on ours. In Italy, Parmigiano-Reggiano is made according to strict rules and is inspected by a consortium that designates it a genuine product of origin. Similarly, Wisconsin is the only state to require cheesemakers to have a cheesemaking license and the University of Wisconsin-Madison is the only place outside of Switzerland where you can become a master cheesemaker, an intense commitment that takes 13 years to complete. 

Outside the U.S., the specialty cheeses made in Wisconsin remain relatively unknown. But that’s changing. Suzanne Fanning, chief marketing officer for the Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin, likens it to what happened with winemaking in the 1970s, when a wine from California rated higher than wines from France at the Judgement of Paris, a notorious blind-tasting competition organised by a British wine merchant in 1976 in which the New and Old world wines were pitted against each other. The competition spurred a new-found respect for the vineyards in Napa Valley; cheeses from Wisconsin are worthy of similar regard. Colby was invented here in 1885 and at the time it was a revelation. The semi-hard cheese replaces whey with water during cooking, giving it a milder flavour than cheddar. Today, Roelli Cheese Haus is famous for its Cheddar Blue, a hybrid of roquefort and cheddar, and Deer Creek makes a quintuple-cream blue cheese with pieces of juniper called The Blue Jay. Among the cheesemakers  who are pushing boundaries in Wisconsin is Huma Siddiqui, who founded the White Jasmine cheese company and incorporates spices from her native Pakistan into gouda, and Rama Hoffpauir of Cosmic Wheel Creamery, who experiments with biodynamic farming to create raw-milk cheeses. Cheesemakers I spoke with talked of a spirit of innovation that they say sets Wisconsin apart – and of feeling constantly challenged to try new things. They say experimentation rather than tradition is encouraged – unlike in other parts of the world – and there’s always room on the board for new cheeses.

A somewhat terrifying photo of me with Wisconsin Parmesan in 2017

Old World cheeses will always have my respect and adoration. I’ve spent much of my adult life living in Italy and, when I’m not there, I dream of pecorino romano and burrata from Puglia. My hope is that one day cheese from Wisconsin will enjoy the same iconic status in Europe that Italian or French cheese has in America. I long for the day I don’t have to explain that cheese from Wisconsin is actually good, not just plentiful. Until then, I take small moments of pride when I can get them, such as seeing a cheese from Wisconsin on a menu in Dublin, or when a friend’s mother raved about a new “favorite Italian cheese” – Sartori’s BellaVitano Gold. “Actually,” I said proudly, “that’s from Wisconsin.” 

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Thanks for reading! Please enjoy this video of the cheese aisle at Woodman’s. It looks like the pasta aisle at my local Interspar in Italy. And these Reddit comments.