The Lady and I want to thank the folks who made the trip possible:
Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board: Robert Schindler, West Coast Marketing: a great tour guide and an all-around great guy. His enthusiasm for the cheesemakers of Wisconsin helped make the trip that much better. Tuesday the WMMB hosted a trade show for the group and introduced us to many more cheesemakers and their representatives. It was terrific.
DPI Specialty Foods: Anna Guensch, Account Executive for pulling the whole thing together and providing some terrific gifts and beer.
DCI Cheese Company: We missed the names of the ladies at Salemville but Kim Dyer hosted the reception at the hotel in Green Bay and it was terrific: terrific cheeses, terrific wines and great conversation.
Your favorite feline foodie (That would be me) wants to thank my fellow travelers although I must admit it was a blow to my ego that most didn’t even seem to notice my presence… sheesh, humans… can be so heartless… but I digress…
The highlights and trivia along the cheese route:
Trivia: The slogan of Culvers, home of the ButterBurger, is “Get Culverized”.
Trivia: The largest mammoth cheddar wheel ever made by Henning’s Wisconsin Cheese: 12,000 pounds – and they made two of them for a grocery store chain in Texas.
Trivia: Milk is delivered daily to Sartori Foods from the 200+ farmers, all within 50 miles of the cheesemaking plant. That milk is being made into cheese within 3 hours of its arrival.
Trivia: More than 100K shares are owned by regular folks in the Green Bay Packers. The shareholders have no voting rights and the shares never increase in value.
Trivia: Mozzarella packed in water has a shelf life of about 30 days while the cryovac version has a shelf life of 60 days.
Trivia: It takes between 10 and 13 pounds of milk to make 1 pound of cheese. The rest is water and whey.
Trivia: BelGioioso wraps their Gorgonzola in foil and then in cellophane with tiny holes so that the cheese can continue to breathe. Cryovac wrap causes the cheese to become wet; the holes in the cellophane prevent that, making for a better product.
Trivia: The average size herd that provides milk to the Salemville Co-Op: 12 cows.
Trivia: The difference between blue cheese and gorgonzola is 30 days. Blue is aged 60 days and gorgonzola is aged 90 days (or more).
Trivia: 100 Pounds of cow milk fetches $12.00 these days… and the price of cow milk is set on the Chicago Commodity Exchange… 100 pounds of goat milk fetches $45.oo these days… 100 pounds of sheep milk fetches $95.00.
Trivia: Due to the outstanding treatment of their cows at the Crave Brothers Farm, the milk yield per cow is about 30K pounds of milk per yield, while the national average is 20K.
Trivia: The average size dairy herd in Wisconsin is 160 cows.
Dazzle your friends with your Wisconsin Cheese trivia… I know The Lady will…
Marcella The Cheesemonger ACS CCP
It's All About Cheese, Baking, Binge TV, Poker and Anything Else That Captures My Fancy… In Other Words "It's All About Me"
