March 13, 2009
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ALL THINGS SWISS AND THEN SOME — Guggisberg Cheese is best known for Swiss-style cheeses like that pictured above, but with an acquisition nearly two years ago it offers a number of other varieties as well.

By Kate Sander

CLEVELAND, Wis. — Near the western shores of Lake Michigan, a herd of about 400 dairy cows grazes. These grazing cows and the pastures from which they derive their nourishment are a source of pride for the Klessig family, who for generations has farmed this land near the small Wisconsin town of Cleveland.

This land and these cows, who call their home Saxon Homestead Farm, also now are the source of new artisanal cheeses being introduced to the marketplace.

Saxon Homestead Creamery, named after its sister company from which all of its milk comes, is one of the latest cheese companies to join the ranks of specialty Wisconsin cheesemakers.

The company’s focus on rotational grazing and helping to preserve a healthy environment in the sensitive Lake Michigan ecosystem are what give the company’s new cheeses their “flavor, by nature,” the company executives say.

Established in 2005 and just introducing its first cheeses this past year, Saxon Homestead Creamery is a partnership between family dairy farmers and brothers Karl and Robert Klessig, their brother-in-law Jerry Heimerl, their three wives, and three dairy industry professionals whom they brought in to help ensure the success of their venture: for cheesemaking expertise, Neville McNaughton of Cheezsorce; for finance, Pat Knowles of Knowles, Brandt & Associates; for marketing and administration, Dan Strongin of Edible Solutions.

• Designed to be eaten as cheese

The company makes “continental” cheeses — cheeses that have their roots in Europe and have a European style to them. But the cheeses also have their own distinctive style that makes them American originals, says McNaughton, who describes the company’s Big Eds cheese, for example, as a hybrid with a clean rind.

The company credits its milk qualities — cross-bred, Jersey and Holstein cows who are grazed, produce an almost perfect cheese milk, the executives say — along with a unique blend of cultures for producing the one-of-a-kind cheeses.

“The cultures are used extremely effectively,” McNaughton says, noting that anyone can make a fairly standard, not very exciting piece of Cheddar. “Once a cheesemaker stumbles upon a good combination, it makes the cheese uniquely theirs.”

The company has started out with a handful of raw milk cheeses.

The company’s first commercially-introduced cheese, which came out in January 2008, is Green Fields, which features sweet nutty tones that vary with the seasons. It is a semi-soft washed rind cheese that is ideal for melting, blending in salad dressings, or at snack and meal time.

Big Eds, commercially introduced this past December, is described as being young and mild but still full of flavor. The cheese is named after Ed Klessig, Karl and Robert’s father who encouraged his sons and son-in-law in their ventures and who died in 2006. His adult children say the cheese, like their father, “hugs you back, and never offends.” The cheese is made from raw cow’s milk formed into cooked, pressed curds and ripened 120 days. It features a “clean” rind meticulously wiped to keep it clean, which cultivates a nearly perfect rind.

“A lot of cheeses when you make them for aging, you can’t sell them when they’re young,” McNaughton says. Not so with Big Eds. Grandpa Ed, carefully selected wheels of Big Eds that are aged for a full year, will be introduced next year, according to McNaughton.

“Big Eds is a really easy to age cheese with great melt and stretch — it’s a really versatile cheese,” he says.

In addition, Saxon Homestead Creamery makes Pastures, a meaty, young but dense, bandage-wrapped cheese; Meadows, an aged variety of Pastures, will be available next year. The company also partners with a local goat dairy to produce a goat’s milk cheese, LaClare Farm Evalon, a smooth, sweet semi-soft goat’s milk cheese aged 70 days.

This fall Saxon Homestead Creamery also will introduce Saxony, which the company describes as a “sophisticated cheese with a nutty flavor and a supple body, as comfortable in the kitchen as it is on the table.” Versatility is really the key for all of the company’s cheeses, according to McNaughton.

“These cheeses are designed to be eaten as cheese,” he says. “These are cheeses you should be able to enjoy with a glass of wine.

“It’s not about cheese as simply sustenance,” he adds. “It’s about the pleasure of food.”

The cheeses are made and sold in whole wheels and are available to distributors nationally. So far, they can be found in Whole Foods, a few conventional grocery chains and smaller, independent cheese shops.

• A story of perseverance

The cheeses have been a long time in coming. They are no accident but are instead the result of careful planning and perseverance by the Klessig family.

“Saxon Homestead Creamery shows that it’s possible, with a good plan and good execution, for an artisan cheesemaker to make cheeses that are affordable so people can eat them every day,” Strongin says.

The Klessig family has been grazing cows since the 1990s, and has been looking into making cheese even longer than that.

In an effort to add value to the company’s milk, Heimerl, the Klessig family member who handles the cheesemaking side of the business, looked into cheesemaking as far back as the 1980s, going so far as to earn his cheesemaker’s license and applying for and receiving a Wisconsin Department of Agriculture Agricultural Development and Diversification grant. But with the help of the grant, the look into cheesemaking showed Heimerl that he wasn’t ready to make that leap.

“So we shelved it, but not completely,” he says.

Instead the family moved into grass-based production and put in a new milking system so more cows could be added. However, the idea of making cheese was still there, and in the summer of 2001 the family put together a business plan to make a soft ripened cheese. Then just as the company was seeking financing, the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred, and banks weren’t ready to take on a risky cheesemaking venture.

Throughout the years, as he looked into cheesemaking, Heimerl was networking, attending American Cheese Society conferences and talking to cheesemakers. And in 2005, a contact with Dan Carter, a founder of the Dairy Business Innovation Center (DBIC), led Heimerl to look into cheesemaking yet again.

This time, the pieces began to fall into place, including bringing on experts McNaughton, Knowles and Strongin as partners in the business. For a bit it looked like another insurmountable obstacle had arisen when building a new cheese plant on the farm proved it wouldn’t be profitable. But then a building in nearby Cleveland — just 1 1/2 miles from the farm — became available, giving the company the ideal location.

The plant site and having three people experienced in the cheese industry have made all the difference, according to Heimerl.

McNaughton, for example, was the architect behind the cheeses and has helped ease the learning curve of cheesemaking.

“Even though I’m a licensed cheesemaker, I’m not a cheesemaker,” Heimerl says, noting that one of the things he was surprised by early on is how difficult it can be to make a really great cheese.

“Make procedures look cut and dried and cookie cutter-like in a textbook. But it’s not just something you can just open a book on and dial in,” he says. “From my early viewpoint, it seemed easy, but I’ve got a lot of respect for what a difficult task it is.

“You use all of your senses to understand what’s going on. I’ve just scratched the surface,” he says.

The company has an experienced cheesemaker, Nathan Dehne, on staff, as well as Heimerl. Heimerl also is involved in the marketing of the cheese and says DBIC has been instrumental in helping the company get started.

“We’ve worked closely with DBIC,” Heimerl says. “They’ve pinpointed distributors for us who are very active and who have good reputations.”

• Looking ahead to the future

Last year, the company made about 100,000 pounds of cheese, and it plans to make more this year. The ultimate goal is to utilize all of the milk from the dairy farm, which would mean producing in the neighborhood of 750,000 pounds of cheese annually, Strongin says.

The business has had its challenges; after all, no one counts on a tanking economy when they’re starting up a business. But the partners are hopeful they’ll be able to weather the economic storm because their cheese is different from others.

The company’s size dictates that the cheeses are a “niche” cheese but yet the company has the capability to produce large enough quantities to be quite sustainable at a fair price, Heimerl notes.

The cheese also stacks up well against European imports, he adds.

The cheese also is packaged attractively, Strongin says, noting that the wheel’s rind is the label. In fact, a source of pride for McNaughton is that the company doesn’t even own a vacuum-packaging machine.

“I think the fact that we don’t have a vacuum-packing machine blows people away,” he says. “But real cheese doesn’t need plastic. It may be an option, but it’s certainly not a requirement.”

The company, he says, is trying to educate people about the growing-in-popularity Slow Food movement and how the cheese fits into that. Compared to many dairies and cheese companies, the company’s carbon footprint is quite small, McNaughton says, noting the grazing cows and the fact that the cheeses are raw milk cheeses utilizing natural rinds.

The end result, he says, is incredible.

“I just love to eat from the middle of the cheese to the rind,” he says. “I’m big into rinded cheeses — I think they’re where it’s at.”

CMN