Directory: artisan & farmestead cheesemakers, Wisconsin

Directory of artisan & farmestead cheesemakers in Wisconsin

I like cheese, and during some research into this marvelous food, I came upon a helpful directory:

http://www.dbicusa.org/resources/finalpdf.pdf

There's also this short list ( )

http://vitalinformation.blogspot.com/20 ... onsin.html

Also, there's this fantastic resource:

http://www.reapfoodgroup.org/atlas/index.htm

VI, have any insight into why/how a relatively large cheesemaker like Belgioso qualifies as an artisanal cheese?

My guess: they produce a few of their many cheeses in an artisanal method. Of course, "artisanal" is a slippery term; "farmstead," much less so.

David Hammond wrote:Directory of artisan & farmestead cheesemakers in Wisconsin

Somewhere on the University of Wisconsin - Madison website, there is a listing of artisans who have have earned the classification of master cheesemakers. I saw something about it on my last tour of Babcock Hall.

Nothing says "cheese road trip!" like this book (I read about it in the NY Times last week): The Atlas of American Artisan Cheese by Jeffrey Roberts.

It's organized by region and state (the word "atlas" should tip you off), so if you know you'll be driving through, say, Oklahoma, you can plan accordingly and make a point of passing through Ada, OK, to check out the Haystack Mountain Goat Dairy. For example.

I found one particular map useful for helping me to confirm (and justify) my suspicions about states I will never live in. The map denotes the general regions laid out in the book, as well as the five states in our union that do not have a single artisanal cheesemaker within their borders: North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Arkansas and Florida.

crrush wrote:I found one particular map useful for helping me to confirm (and justify) my suspicions about states I will never live in. The map denotes the general regions laid out in the book, as well as the five states in our union that do not have a single artisanal cheesemaker within their borders: North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Arkansas and Florida.

As interesting to me as the "where" is the "why" -- why aren't there artisanal cheesemakers in these states? One reason might be the lack of grazing land (in, say, Florida) and cheesemaking tradition (in most of the places you listed). Another factor could be just lack of population, so there's fewer people to do cool things like write poems, design new technologies and make cheese: Wisconsin has ten times more people than Wyoming. Of course, too many people means less grazing land: Florida's population has doubled in the past 20 years and in the next 20 years it's going to have just half as much grazing land as it does now. (http://www.ces.fau.edu/agro/dl/The_Role_of_Grazing_Lands_in_Land_Managment.pdf).

My guess is the primary reason for presence or lack of artisanal cheesemakers is related to tradition: the kind of folks who congregated in Wisconsin came from strong artisanal cheesemaking traditions: Germans, Swiss, etc.