I unpacked such a good cheese for my daughter's lunch, the “1910 Recipe” raw milk cheddar from WI's Maple Leaf Co-op, that it made me realize we need a thread dedicated to local cheese.

It's not that I have to eat local cheeses, and I'll turn a blind eye to anyone smuggling me in some real brie.  Likewise, I've never met a piece of Jasper Hills that I would not eat.  Nevertheless, I am enthralled by my world of local cheeses–meaning cheeses from WI, MI, IL, IN and IA (well, there's a couple from MN I like but I do not generally see them around the Chicago area).  There are so many quality cheeses from around here, that I just never want to have to eat non-local cheese.  Moreover, there's so much to like in the way local cheesemakers operate.  Even the big guys like BelGioioso are worth supporting.

Getting back to the cheese opened and sampled today.  Maple Leaf Co-op makes some of the best cheddars out of WI, and that says a lot, huh.  It's English Hollow cheddar has won several recent awards including an award at the 2008 World Championship (!).  The English Hollow is indeed good, and it is, what I'd call a classic WI cheddar, with a bit of sharp bite to it.  The 1910 Recipe cheddar is much milder, but it is also a cheese that shows that mild is not the same thing as flavorless.  In fact the first taste on the tongue is the raw milk funk.  It is only a second or two later that sweet milk creaminess takes over.  It's a cheese not too easily found around Chicago.  Cheese lovers should make the drive some time to the Monroe, WI area for the cheeses, including Maple Leaf.

Please tell us about your favorite local cheeses.

I'm a bit behind on my tasting notes, but one nibble of the cheese that went into my daughter's lunch today, and I knew I had to post now.  As I am wont to say, there are so many great local cheeses, I see little reason to stray.  The thing is, we get local cheeses made in very personal, farmhouse styles like those from Willi Lehner's BleuMont and we get local cheeses from big factories like Sartori.  The quality of the former is a given, but it's the excellence of the latter too that make our cheese team so successful.

Sartori makes excellent Italian style grating cheeses, maybe not with the full-on complexity of the best Italian cheeses (as Sartori uses pasteurized milk), but believe me, they are more than good enough.  Still, I come today to praise a cheese original to Wisconsin.  Sartori calls it Bellavitano.  They describes it as a cross between a Parmesan and an aged cheddar.  God this cheese is good.  You won't notice the lack of bacterial funk.  This cheese is both incredibly creamy and a bit crunchy.  There's a whisper of the Parmesan tang.  These guys call it “a great all-around table cheese; it would please cheese gourmets and casual snackers alike.“

When you are stocking up on local cheeses, support our artisans like Joe Burns at Brunkow/Fayette Creamery, but do not ignore the big guys like Sartori.

Two local cheese-related items:

First, our family went out near Rockford last August to Angelic Organics to participate in the cheese-making class. My older boy and I made a rushed feta while my wife and younger son made queso blanco. Because there was so little time, both tasted mostly the same as the ricotta and other cheese that were being made by the group. Nonetheless, the boys loved it and all of us learned a lot about cheese making. Whether it was worth 3 hours driving is unclear. I wish Angelic would offer the same class through their Chicago branch.

The other item is a simple shout out to our friend Gaylon Emerzian of spatulatta.com, who produced the classic “Living on the Wedge” documentary, which celebrates Wisconsin artisanal cheese makers. It was a huge thrill to watch a retired couple make goat cheese just north of the border, then find it at Whole Foods and eat it while re-watching the footage of them making the cheese from scratch.