Colby cheese should be Wisconsin’s official cheese
COLBY – JoAnne Peterson sent me an astonishing email a few months ago.
The Wisconsin state Legislature was “considering making Colby cheese the state cheese,” the 73year-old Brookfield resident wrote. “Make a push for that.”
The shock wasn’t that JoAnne assumed that I would have any influence on statewide policy: I’m lucky I get to decide what I eat for breakfast. What’s inconceivable is Colby cheese isn’t already the state cheese. It would have been a nobrainer in 1898. That’s when a Phillips merchant touted the fact that he sold Colby cheese as one of the reasons people should come to his store.*
Wisconsin doesn’t even have a state cheese. Yes, Wisconsin cheese is the official state dairy product, milk is its official beverage and the dairy cow is the official domestic animal. But no specific cheese. Our lives are diminished because of it.
JoAnne contacted me because she had recently read a story I wrote in which I pointed out I was a native of Colby. I name-drop my hometown in stories and conversations a lot.
I do this for a couple of reasons. One, it establishes bona fide credentials as a true cheese-blooded Wisconsin son. (You can’t get any more Wisconsin than growing up in dairy farm country near a city for which a cheese was named, can you?) Two, it’s a fantastic conversation starter, especially if I am in some far-flung, foreign place, like New York. (I once, to the ire of the impatient people in line behind me, had a lengthy conversation with a New York deli worker after I told him where I was from. He was a fan of Colby cheese. “It’s da best!” I remember him saying.)
JoAnne shares my brand of Colby pride. “When people ask where I
was born, I always say ‘in a world-famous town,’” she said. “When they look mystified when I say Colby, I say, ‘home of the world-famous cheese Colby cheese.’ They all know the cheese and then chuckle.”
*This is true! The historical marker commemorating the development of the Colby cheese quotes the Colby Phonograph newspaper: “A merchant in Phillips gives as one of the 13 reasons why people should trade with him, that he sells the genuine Steinwand Colby Cheese.”
This cheese has its own lobbyists
A group of Colby residents started to lobby for their hometown cheese in November 2019, and went to Madison to testify before legislators in January 2020. Connie Gurtner, the city’s clerk/ treasurer, was part of that effort.
“To me from Colby, Wisconsin, it obviously should be the state cheese. It’s what we’re known for, it’s our namesake,” Connie said.
Matt Oehmichen, 36, who, with his father and brother, owns Short Lane Ag Supply in the town of Colby, was also a leader in the lobbying effort to get a statewide Colby cheese designation.
Before going into the ag business, Matt was a history teacher, and the connection with the past spurs him forward in Colby cheese lobbying efforts.
He lives on the farm he grew up on, about a mile and half from the Steinwand cheese factory.
Not only was Colby cheese original, Matt said, it was so popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s that he contends it gave a rocket boost to the Wisconsin cheese industry as a whole.
“It changed the cheese game,” Matt said in his testimony in front of the Assembly Agriculture Committee. In 1910, Wisconsin became the top producer of cheese in the country, and “we’ve never lost that rank,” Matt said.
Today, Colby cheese production in
Wisconsin is well behind that of mozzarella and cheddar. But Colby is known throughout the world, Matt said, and it’s the best tasting, too.
“It’s basically the ultimate cheese,” he said. “And it speaks to the identity of what it means to be Wisconsin.”
A groundbreaker pours cold water on cheese
Colby cheese was developed by a young cheesemaker named Joseph Steinwand in 1885. He was working at a cheese factory opened three years earlier by his father, Ambrose Steinwand Sr. That factory, long since closed, was one of the first in the region.
Joseph created Colby cheese by modifying the process of making cheddar, which originated in England.
To make cheese, cheesemakers mix rennet in warm milk. Rennet is an enzyme that curdles the milk, which then separates into curds and whey. That mixture is again heated to firm up the curd and the whey is drained away.
When making cheddar, those curds are pressed into forms and aged.
But Joseph added a step and rinsed and cooled the curd with cold water. This rinsing process gives “the high moisture content that makes Colby cheese unique,” according to the city of Colby’s website.
JoAnne, who retired from the Wauwatosa School District as a library administrator, said she grew up under the impression that Joseph blundered onto the Colby cheese-making process.
But JoAnne says she can’t find any evidence that it was a mistake. It’s therefore likely Joseph was a cheesemaking genius.
JoAnne has a personal perspective on the Colby cheese saga. Her grandfather, she said, worked in the factory, and lived in quarters in the building. That was common at the time, she said, and in 1917 her mother was born at that factory.
It’s a better cheese on many layers
The result of Joseph Steinwand’s culinary experimentation is a moister, creamier, milder cheese than cheddar. Colby cheese is not designed to be aged as other sharper cheeses are. The perfect slice of Colby cheese will squeak against your teeth like good curds do. It has a smooth texture and just the right amount of springiness when you bite into it.
It makes for great cheeseburgers and superb grilled cheese sandwiches.
The effort to honor Colby languished in some committee in the state Capitol until the legislative session ended in March 2020, in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It was just the worst timing,” Connie said. “It wasn’t a priority of (lawmakers) anymore, and March of 2020 was the end of the session.”
Now, if all signs of hope play out as medical experts predict, we are reaching the end of this wretched time in our history. Maybe it’s time for our elected officials to once again bring up the topic of designating Colby as the state cheese.
Matt Oehmichen thinks so. “Colby cheese is more than just a cheese; it is a representation of all that is best about being a Wisconsinite,” he told lawmakers. “This is about pride in our state of Wisconsin.”
JoAnne isn’t giving up, either. She said she’s starting an email-writing campaign encouraging legislators to get on the stick and make Colby cheese the state cheese already.
But here’s the thing. Colby people typically don’t rely on others to get things done. We thrive on self reliance and a chippy, stubborn pride. And most of us are pretty skeptical that the government will help us get to where we want to go, so we do it ourselves.
So in the spirit of that Colby mindset — and really, every small town in Wisconsin has it — we the people of Colby hereby declare that Colby cheese IS THE state cheese of Wisconsin.
We don’t need the politicians in Madison to make it so. But they should anyway.