Meet the Woman Bringing a Fresh Perspective to Roth Cheese
We’ve teamed up with Wisconsin Cheese for an interview mini-series called Meet the Makers, featuring a sampling of the state’s finest cheesemakers and their award-winning creations.
Cheese has been made in Wisconsin since before it was even a state. In the 1830s and 40s, a wave of European immigrants planted roots in the region and started dairy farms, where they made homemade cheeses to get the most out of all that milk. It was a woman in fact, Anne Pickett, who started the first official cheesemaking business in the area, a whole seven years before Wisconsin joined the union in 1848. This time period also saw the creation of now-classic Wisconsin cheeses—namely Brick (we have the folks at Widmer’s Cheese Cellars to thank for this) and Colby. By 1910, the state surpassed New York in milk production, earning it the nickname, “America’s Dairyland.”