Courtesy Landmark Creamery
Cheeses at Landmark’s shop are great as a snack or in a picnic basket.
The Madison area should consider itself lucky that two friends bucked the old adage that no one should go into business with friends. Anna Landmark and Anna Thomas Bates, the yin and yang of Landmark Creamery in Paoli, make award-winning cheeses and are continuing the proud cheesemaking traditions that Wisconsin — and Paoli — are steeped in.
The two met at a potluck sponsored by Soil Sisters, a Wisconsin group founded to create “a supportive community for female and nonbinary farmers, gardeners, and land stewards.” A friendship quickly formed, and it wasn’t long before Bates inquired about joining the Landmark Creamery as a co-owner. Bates concentrates on marketing and sales while Landmark focuses on cheesemaking.
“My grandfather was a stout Swiss farmer, his grandfather one of the original settlers of New Glarus, and milk, cheese and butter were staples,” says Landmark of her background. “Swiss cheese with breakfast, with dinner and with supper. Sometimes aged and sharp as can be, sometimes baby with a mild bite and perfect elasticity. I loved it all.”
Landmark founded Landmark Creamery in 2013. In 2017, looking to buy a second-hand walk-in cooler, she entered an empty storefront in Paoli and left with a completely different plan.
She and Bates had been making cheese at Cedar Grove Cheese in Plain, but they wanted a store and a space where they could set up their own aging caves. They soon signed a lease to rent the building, eventually creating a welcoming shop in the front and building the cheese aging caves in the back.
“This building has been a retail location for a long time,” says Landmark. Blanchardville farmers Ken and Sherrie Ruegsegger operated Paoli Local Foods, a cafe and grocery there from 2007-2017.
“It’s been fun to be here,” says Landmark, observing that Paoli has “changed a lot since 2017.” Sales for Landmark have grown, and Landmark notes that its jump in sales for 2023 was bigger, “in part because of Seven Acre,” says Landmark.
When Seven Acre Dairy opened a block away in 2022, owner Nic Mink enlisted Landmark to produce its artisan butter and soft serve ice cream. Seven Acre also uses Landmark cheeses in its restaurant and cafe. The butter is made right at Seven Acre. The ice cream will be made at Seven Acre with milk from a Paoli farm, the Sarbacker’s, as soon as they get a final piece of equipment, a homogenizer. (The bulk of Landmark’s other cheeses are currently made at Chalet Cheese Coop.)
At the Landmark Creamery shop in Paoli, there’s plenty of sampling, and sometimes trial batches of new or specialty cheeses not found elsewhere are for sale. Specialty cheeses from Landmark and other local dairies, meat and charcuterie, crackers, preserves, pickles and chocolates among other goodies can go into creating an amazing picnic basket.
Landmark’s Sunday Brunch Box includes fresh biscuits, fresh sheep milk cheese, tangy cultured butter, sharp pimento cheese, a cute little wheel of brie, honey and salami.
Landmark also serves grilled cheese sandwiches made with Madison Sourdough bread, and a choice from among a handful of changing cheese varieties — from cheddar to the less well known pipit (a creamy farmhouse-style sheep cheese), plus various toppings that also change. At the time of my visit there was a choice of cranberry chipotle, tomato jam, raspberry rose and mostarda.
And we haven’t even started on the cheese itself! My favorite is the Sweet Annie, a nutty, sweet sheep milk gouda rated as one of the top 20 cheeses at the 2023 United States Cheese Championships. The Tallgrass Reserve is named in honor of the pasture-raised cows that produce milk for this buttery, earthy cheese. Anabasque is Landmark’s favorite, and features a strong sheepy flavor. The “dessert” of my cheese tasting is a bit of the ricotta, much firmer and sweeter than traditional ricotta. Landmark suggests whipping it so that it takes on an almost frosting-like texture.
“The ricotta is a new cheese for us. It’s made with cow milk. At some point we’ll add in a sheep version,” she says. “But I kind of like how it’s turning out. I like the denseness of it. We’re still fine-tuning packaging on that one. So we haven’t really started selling this one outside of the store yet.”
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Landmark founded Landmark Creamery in 2013. In 2017, looking to buy a second-hand walk-in cooler, she entered an empty storefront in Paoli and left with a completely different plan.
