January 13, 2012
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NOT JUST COW’S MILK — Here, Cedar Grove Cheese ages wheels of Dante, a sheep’s milk cheese made for the Wisconsin Sheep Dairy Cooperative. The company is known for experimenting and utilizing all different kinds of milk, including that of water buffalo, to make cheese.

LOTS OF VARIETY — Cedar Grove Cheese makes an array of handcrafted specialty cheeses, all rbST-free and many organic.

By Kate Sander

MILWAUKEE — Urban southside Milwaukee isn’t a conventional place to open a cheese factory.

Then again, Bob Wills, president of Cedar Grove Cheese in Plain, Wis., as well as the president of soon-to-open Clock Shadow Creamery in Milwaukee, has never been one to worry too much about what’s conventional.

At Cedar Grove Cheese, Wills has always been one to think outside the box. In 1993, he was the first cheesemaker to certify his products as being rbST-free.

In the late 1990s, when most other small cheese companies were just beginning to think about becoming more environmentally sensitive, Wills installed the Living Machine to naturally process waste from his cheese plant and return clean water back to the environment. And in recent years, instead of looking at other cheese companies as simply competitors, he’s opened up his plant to up-and-coming cheesemakers to experiment and run their small batches.

Now, in Milwaukee, Wills plans to open a small cheese plant in a “food desert” — defined as an area in the industrialized world where healthful, affordable food is difficult to obtain. Not only does Wills hope to bring dairy products to consumers in this area, he’s hopeful that other food manufacturers will follow. In a bit of serendipity in a city known for its cheese and beer pairings, Milwaukee Brewery Co. already is located across the street. Wills thinks a company making sausages and brats would complete the perfect Wisconsin trifecta. Luring a bakery to the neighborhood would be nice too, he says.

Currently, the Milwaukee facility is nearing completion, and Wills is working on getting equipment for Clock Shadow Creamery finalized. Production currently is slated to begin in March if — knock on wood — everything continues to move on schedule.

So far, the development of Clock Shadow Creamery has gone fairly quickly, at least in terms of new cheese plant construction, which often can be notoriously slow.

Wills was consulting with Wisconsin’s Dairy Business Innovation Center (DBIC) to evaluate potential cheese factory sites when the pieces to bring Clock Shadow Creamery to fruition began to fall into place in late 2010. Milwaukee developer and investor Juli Kaufmann, who also was in contact with DBIC, was going to be building a new, green facility on the near southside and a restaurant which planned to lease space had backed out. Would Wills be interested in the space?

“I had just returned from ACS (the American Cheese Society conference) in Seattle and had been to Beecher’s and seen their cheese production in an urban setting,” Wills says. “And I thought, ‘Maybe this will work.’”

With the involvement of DBIC, it didn’t take long for a plan to develop: a cheese plant to provide fresh, local food products for the near southside of Milwaukee and surrounding neighborhoods, utilizing milk from dairies on the fringe of the city that are at particular risk from urban encroachment. The plant also will be a new employer in an area of the city where unemployment is high.

The “green” building also fits in well with Wills’ desire to be environmentally conscious. In addition, Wills says wash water will go through a digester being developed by the Potawatami Tribe before any water is discharged in a nearby stream. Growing Power Inc., a national nonprofit organization, will use waste from the facility for compost as well.
As the pieces have come together, so too did the name. The plant is located just a few blocks from Rockwell Automation’s landmark four-sided clock that rises 280 feet from the streets of Milwaukee, so Clock Shadow Creamery seemed the ideal moniker.

“When you look out the window, it’s the main thing you see,” Wills says of the clock tower.

Clock Shadow Creamery will lease the first floor of the new building; the top three floors will be occupied by medical clinics and community organizations. The plant will manufacture primarily fresh cheeses, including fresh Mozzarella, quark and cheese curds. Products generally will be made and distributed the same day, a prospect that excites Wills who previously had to deal with the logistics of a two-hours-plus trip to Milwaukee from Plain if Cedar Grove wanted to sell fresh curds in the city.

Despite its status as a niche producer in an urban environment, Wills says Clock Shadow Creamery products will be moderately priced in order to support the community and make sure the product is readily accessible to the creamery’s neighbors.

The creamery’s products also will include cheeses inspired by Milwaukee’s ethnic communities. The city is known for its ethnic festivals, and Wills hopes to make special cheeses of the week for each of the particular events.

To help further connect urban people to their food, the plant will include public viewing areas and tours. Cheeses will be available at the creamery and distributors will handle getting the cheeses into local grocery stores. In addition, local restaurants, several of which have sprung up in the area, have expressed interested in incorporating Clock Shadow Creamery’s cheeses into their menu items. Wills currently is working on finding other outlets for the cheese as well.

Clock Shadow Creamery’s day-to-day operations will be managed by Ron Henningfeld, a high school teacher turned cheesemaker who has been working closely with Wills and Andy Hatch of Uplands Cheese to learn the craft. The plan is for Henningfeld eventually to take over ownership of the enterprise, says Wills, who adds that if the Clock Shadow Creamery model is successful, he foresees opening other small urban cheese plants in additional cities.

Cedar Grove Cheese initially will handle milk purchases and payroll for Clock Shadow Creamery, and some product will travel back and forth between the two sites.

Wills says he has spent a great deal of time in the past year working on and perfecting quark, production of which will be transferred to Clock Shadow Creamery when it opens this spring.

Wills confesses quark is now his favorite cheese because of its extreme versatility. He’s cooked often with it at home and used it in dips, lasagne and even pancakes.

While concentrating on the new cheese plant, Wills also has been busy at home at Cedar Grove Cheese, developing other new products and working with up-and-coming cheesemakers. All of Cedar Grove Cheese’s products are made from rbST-free milk and some are organic, but the variety of products which the company makes is far reaching.

They are traditional cheeses like Cheddar and Colby, and then some not-so-traditional ones.

Besides his new favorite quark, Wills and his team have been perfecting Ossau-Irati, a hard French-style sheep’s milk cheese.

“It was a puzzle to us that we’ve finally solved,” Wills says.

In addition, Cedar Grove also is one of the only, if not only, cheese plants in the country commercially producing water buffalo milk cheese. The company is working on a new label featuring “Armando,” the giant water buffalo bull whose progeny is producing much of the buffalo milk.

The water buffalo cheese is a traditional-style Mozzarella di Bufala, with a fresh, delicate flavor and elastic texture. The Mozzarella cheese is made in wheels and stretched into balls. Wedges from the wheels are drier and good for shredding on pizza, Wills says, while the balls are soft and good for slicing, for fresh basil-tomato salad, topping on pizza, or plain eating. The company also is experimenting with Water Buffalo Cheddar.

Wills says he is continually experimenting with different milks and cheeses, and he encourages young cheesemakers to do the same.

“I think they like working with me because I don’t say something can’t be done, I say, ‘Let’s see what happens.’”

Among the cheesemakers he’s worked with is 25-year-old U.S. Champion Cheesemaker Katie Hedrich of LaClare Farms, who makes her Chevre at Cedar Grove while LaClare Farms builds its own production facility.

“I put a lot of emphasis on trying to find the next generation of cheesemakers and networking them with each other,” he says. “I’d like to see it turn into a young cheesemakers’ guild and have them take it in their own direction.”

This past summer Cedar Grove Cheese also hosted a cheesemaker from Japan.

Wills says having so many different cheesemakers in and out of his facility has been a good experience in many ways, including raising the level of interest among his own cheesemakers.

“It shows them how much pride there is in this industry,” Wills says. “It’s helped the rest of the cheesemakers believe what they do is exciting.”

CMN