Uriah Carpenter
The big cheese! Roelli's Little Mountain took "Best of Show."
A Wisconsin cheese rose to the top of the mountain last week, besting more than 1,800 competitors.
Little Mountain, made by Roelli Cheese Co. of Shullsburg, was named Best of Show at the American Cheese Society conference in Des Moines. It’s a raw, cow’s milk cheese with a smooth, nutty flavor that is a tip of the hat to cheesemaker Chris Roelli’s Swiss heritage. It’s his take on a cheese called Appenzeller, from the Appenzell region of Switzerland.
Jane Burns
Cheese winners Chris Roelli (left) and his wife, Kris, as the top cheese was announced.
“This is everything,” Roelli said after winning the award. “It’s everything for everyone who ever had our back. Every crappy day is now better.”
The cheese is made in 15-pound wheels that age for eight to 14 months. The winning wheel had aged for nine months, Roelli said.
Roelli, a fourth-generation cheesemaker, made his mark in the artisanal cheese world in 2008 when he debuted Dunbarton Blue. The cheddar-blue has become his company’s signature cheese and was followed three years later by another cheddar blue, Red Rock.
Jane Burns
Best of Show winner.
Little Mountain is Roelli’s third- or fourth-best-selling product, and it’s probably about to get a lot more popular. Roelli had 1,200 pounds of it in the cellar, in various stages of aging, when he won the award last Friday.
“He’s going to be making a lot more of it now,” says his wife, Kris.
The cheese is currently in stock at Fromagination, for $30 a pound. It will also soon be on the shelf at Metcalfe’s Market.
Demand was such that the company’s website crashed over the weekend. On Monday, Chris Roelli sent a letter to distributors saying that until recently the cheese had been marketed only locally and plans are in place to increase production. He also asked them to be patient.
“It has overwhelmed us, but it is a great problem to have,” he said in the note to distributors.
Uriah Carpenter
Cheese winners Kris (left) and Chris Roelli.
Roelli’s honor capped a good week for Wisconsin cheesemakers. State producers earned 28 blue ribbons in 108 categories, and won 104 overall ribbons.
Another top winner, Jeffs’ Select Gouda from Caves of Faribault, Minnesota, also had a Wisconsin connection. The cheese, which was in a third-place tie for Best of Show, is a collaboration between Jeff Wideman of Maple Leaf Cheese in Monroe, who makes the cheese that is then aged by Jeff Jirik at the Caves of Faribault.
Maple Leaf won seven ribbons at the event; another Monroe company, Klondike Cheese Company, won 11. Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese of Waterloo won six, as did Emmi Roth USA of Monroe.
