Aged to Perfection: Four Generations of Cheesemaking
Jill Klosterman

Sid Cook is not a cheesehead.

Sid Cook is a cheese master—the reigning king of dairyland, and the fourth of his bloodline to ascend to professional cheesemaker status. But Cook did not achieve his Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker crown via nepotism. Rather, Cook blended pure heartland ingredients with the built knowledge of heritage, science and art to create a cheese experience.

“There are a lot of people who make cheese, but not a lot of cheesemakers,” Cook said, adding emphatically, “I am a cheesemaker.”

In the cheese industry, the distinction between makers of cheese and cheesemakers is critical. Those who make the product do so via a completely computerized process, interacting with machines rather than dairy products. Think Kraft, and you’ve got people who make cheese, according to Cook.

“Most of the cheeses that are in the grocery store are made in commodity plants where the cheese goes through a rubber hose into a tank and you don’t see it until it comes out in a cardboard box,” he said. “It’s done very efficiently, by time, it’s all computerized and they produce in three or four days what we produce in a year.”

Cheesemakers, on the other hand, are proficient in both artistry and grading. True masters regularly evaluate cheese quality, defects and maturity through a sensual process no computer can match: Grading starts with a visual inspection and continues with an assessment of smell, taste and texture.

At Cook’s Carr Valley Cheese, a group of 12 licensed cheesemakers—whose collective experience in the industry spans nearly two centuries—oversee the production and grading of each cheese specimen.

“We have a tremendous amount of depth and breadth,” Cook said. “We have two Masters who have completed a 15-year program and have been making cheese for 80 years between them. We have two other cheesemakers that have another 85 years of experience. And we have the other eight that have been licensed for an average of six years between them.”

All three Masters at Carr Valley Cheese completed the Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker Program, billed by the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board as “the most ambitious and rigorous advanced training program in the country and the only Master program outside of Europe.” All said and done, the program requires 15 years of advanced training and education.

“There’s very few who enter it and even fewer who become Wisconsin Master Cheesemakers,” said Cathy Hart, director of cheese company communications for the WMMB. Compared to his fellow masters, Hart said Cook, who has mastered Cheddar and Fontina, stands out as an innovator.

“He’s developed so many artisanal cheese varieties—that’s really his niche, to continue looking to refine and innovate with different types of cheese,” she said.

To Cook, history and heritage constitute key ingredients in any artisan cheese, as the ability to predict cheese maturity requires an immense flavor memory. That’s why, Cook said, Carr Valley Cheese develops new varieties by blending family tradition, Wisconsin heritage and European influence in each of more than 60 varieties of cheese, 20 being Cook's own American originals.

“True cheesemakers work by learning what the cheese is doing, not by the clock that’s ticking,” Cook said. “For example, a grocery store cheese labeled ‘sharp’ or ‘aged’ is usually only aged six, nine months. But ours is totally different. We age it from four years, six years, eight years, 10 years. You’re going to get a lot more flavor and a lot more taste.”

Moreover, he said, Cook's family recipes have incubated well beyond four generations.

“Many of the recipes we use are those that I learned from my dad and he learned from my mother's dad and are generational,” he said. “Those are very traditional, but we also do some things that are very innovative and unusual.” Among his proudest innovations, Cook mentioned a natural-rind sheep-milk cheese whose “mellow, complex and sweet” qualities reflect his daughter Marisa, after whom he named the cheese. But Sid’s father Sam raved about the Baby Swiss.

“I like the Baby Swiss—I do like them all but the favorite is used on eggs and it's very, very good,” Sam Cook said. “We used to just have one cheese place and a few cheeses, and he's carried it to new places—he's carried it on to a different height.”

Today, a door separates store from factory at the La Valle cheese plant. Decades ago, when Sam Cook ran the family business, the swinging door served as a passageway between home and factory.

“I was always out in the plant because growing up, the cheese factory and the house were connected,” Cook said, the dairyland memory accentuated by a thick Midwestern accent.

“Ya know,” he continued, “every morning at breakfast I’d be sitting there and the door would be opening and shutting, and my dad would be in and out of the plant and there was always that activity going on.”

Unlike his peers, Cook never aspired to become an astronaut or professional baseball player—though he did briefly consider becoming an attorney. However, the cheese plant always captured his fancy, and he mimicked his father’s every move.

“Of course I always wanted to be a cheesemaker—I was always out there in the plant, volunteering to do things,” he said. “I’d take the trier and stick it right through the wax, pull it out, take the plug and then stick it back in there. You know, I’d see my dad doing that and I’d drive him absolutely crazy because he’d go to sell the cheese and it would be full of holes.”

In cheese-making lexicon, a trier is a tube-like, metal instrument used to core cheeses for sampling. But if dealing with Cook as a child proved trying at times, Sam Cook said he has full confidence in his son today.

“I’d say he’s the top [Wisconsin] cheesemaker,” he said. “In the first place, he’s doing a good job. In the second place, he's our son.”

“We’re very proud of him,” added Sid’s mother Merna, whose family started one of the first cheese plants in Vernon County in the 1890s.

In the eyes of the Cook family, tradition and heritage play a key role in the art of cheesemaking.

“Even though there are a lot of people starting up cheese businesses, they don’t have the flavor memory and aren’t familiar with the science of it to make subtle adjustments in texture or flavor,” Cook said. “It’s really just a depth of knowledge that makes it happen.”

But at a basic level, he said over the thunder of machinery, cheesemaking starts with fresh cow, sheep or goat milk, as well as mixed milk. 

“First, we pasteurize the sheep's milk and add cultures to the milk and ripen it,” he said of his famed Black Sheep Truffle cheese, which won first place at the 2006 American Cheese Society Competition. In one day, Cook said the plant uses about 12,000 pounds of sheep milk to produce the variety, which accounts for nearly one quarter of an astonishing 60,000 to 70,000 pounds of milk processed daily at two of three Carr Valley Cheese factories. The culturing process creates a warm, damp factory environment, emitting a sweet scent that hangs in the humid air.

To culture the milk, factory workers heat pasteurized milk in a vat with starter bacteria, promoting fermentation and thereby growth of lactic acid. Depending on the flavor and acidity of the cheese, the bacteria added may either produce lactic acid alone or other compounds. Specific culturing processes are responsible for producing “eyes”—holes—in cheese. Some bacterial compounds react with the milk to create pockets of gas, creating bubbles as with Swiss cheese.

Cook continued the tour of the plant with the eagerness of a first timer, dipping into a vat of fresh curds for a sample. Punctuating a wide grin, Cook explained the next step in cheesemaking.

“We add enzymes at the correct pH and coagulate. Then, we cut the milk with wire knives and heat to a slow the culture growth,” he said.

Nearby, four factory workers clad in blue jumpsuits and hairnets measured and pressed the freshly coagulated curds into 12-pound wheels.

The enzyme Cook referenced, chymosin, is commonly known as rennet—though this may vary depending on the type of cheese. Adding enzyme requires precision, as does the subsequent time and heating allotted for curdling. Workers add rennet to incite the milk protein to precipitate. In layman’s terms, this process converts protein to the main substances of cheese curd and whey.

After cutting the curds, “We drain the whey from the cheese and add the salt and then the truffle,” Cook said, again referencing Black Sheep Truffle cheese.

Draining the whey means increasing the shelf life of cheese. It essentially dehydrates the curds, diminishing the milk’s water activity and thus propensity for spoilage. The amount of whey drained amounts to both an economic and artistic decision, as it determines its vending longevity and flavor.

“The tricky part is [getting] the right amount of truffle to cheese ratio,” Cook said. “We want to achieve both a sheep cheese flavor and not overpower it with truffle. We want the flavors to compliment or dominate—this is the balance.”

And this cheesemaster spares no expense to make the truffled delicacy—sheep's milk costs $78 per hundredweight and Italian truffles boast a price tag of $400 to $600 per pound. Not to mention the cost of the trip to Italy that inspired the cheese, which offers a rich, earthy flavor to soothe the palate.

The last step in the process is ripening or curing, and depending on the cheese, additional spicing may come into play. Apple Smoked Cheddar, a white cheese that has won first place at the 2005 American Cheese Society competition and third place at the 2006 World Cheese competition, is generously hand rubbed with paprika to accentuate the flavor from the apple smoker.

“We purposefully make [cheeses] unusual so that there’s a twist or a nuance at some point to differentiate them from other cheeses,” Cook said. “They’re just a little different from anything else, even the cheddar.”

Flavorful twists and turns differentiate Cook’s cheeses from any other according Heather Porter Engwall, director of national product communications for the WMMB.

“All of the Masters have a skill set and a passion, but Sid is one of few others who do mix milks—cow, goat and sheep,” she said, noting that “in doing so, Sid has won more awards than any other cheesemaker in the world.”

Some cheeses, once dipped in glossy red or black wax, remain in ripening mode for up to 10 years. Among the top sellers at Carr Valley Cheese, Aged Cheddar 10-year ranks third, followed by the eight-year and five-year Aged Cheddars in fourth and fifth place, respectively. Of course, Fresh Cheddar Curds straight from the factory ranks as the company’s top seller, with Apple Smoked Cheddar in second.

But even when a new variety makes its debut in Carr Valley Cheese stores, Cook leaves room for adjustment.

“We document all ingredients and amounts that we use so small adjustments can be made seasonally,” he said, noting that Black Sheep Truffle took several initial batches to strike the ideal flavor balance.

Such variations lend credence to Cook’s skills, developed over time, which allow him to create vastly different varieties of cheese with just a few staple ingredients: milk, lactic acid, enzymes and salt. Depending on the cheese he intends to produce, Cook adjusts ingredients and procedures with natural precision.

“Very few people can just walk into this business and make edible cheese—cheese with the right smell, taste, texture, appearance,” Cook said.

Sam Cook agreed: “You have to get the right ingredients, you have to have the right temperature and you have to do it right,” he said, adding, “Sid does it right.”