The Matterhorn name is taken from the mountain in the Alps that straddles the border between Switzerland and Italy, harkening back to Joe’s grandfather, who was a native of Switzerland.Īnother relatively new product line for Widmer’s Cheese is cold pack cheese food. “It just makes a fantastic flavor,” he said.
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The company began experimenting with trial batches for Matterhorn in early 2019, and kept tweaking the recipe “until we got what we wanted”
The newest product at Widmer’s Cheese is Matterhorn Alpine Cheddar, which Joe said uses the same cultures as the company’s award-winning Homestead Cheddar, but with added Alpine cultures. The company sees a lot of upside in the specialty Cheddar category, but “there’s a lot of competition out there.” In the Cheddar category, Widmer’s Cheese is known for quite a few aged variations, Joe noted, including one-year, two-year, four-year, six-year, eight-year, 10-year, 12-year, and 15-year. He returned to the family business in 1978, “and I’ve been here ever since.” While the company is turning 100 years old, Joe Widmer stands in Widmer's Cheese Cellars' new cheese aging cave.Īfter that time away from the family business, Widmer enrolled at Moraine Park Technical College in Fond du Lac, WI, where he got his degree in food science. He went to work on the railroad for two years, “pounding spikes and everything.” “I’m sick of cheese and I’m sick of school,” he recalled telling his father. He began working there at a very young age, and helped out at the factory every day before and after grade school and high school.īut Widmer left the business, temporarily, after high school. Like many members of family-owned Wisconsin cheese factories, Joe Widmer grew up above the factory. Widmer’s Cheese is the only US cheese company that still uses bricks in the Brick cheesemaking process, Joe pointed out. The company still makes Brick cheese much the same way as it has for the past 100 years, using the same type of open vats that Joe’s grandfather used, and also still using the same well-worn five-pound bricks that his grandfather used to press the whey from the cheese after it has been placed in the forms. But the aged variety is making a comeback as consumers’ tastes are much more adventurous these days. Today, the market for the traditional foil-wrapped Brick isn’t nearly as great as it once was, and the company sells considerably more mild Brick cheese than the surface-ripened aged variety, Widmer noted. The company started making traditional stirred-curd Colby sometime in about the 1940s, Joe noted. So Widmer’s Cheese, like many other cheese factories in the area, started out making traditional Brick cheese, as well as Cheddar cheese. John Widmer, Joe’s grandfather, immigrated to Wisconsin from Switzerland in 1905, and worked as a cheese maker at another plant in Dodge county, WI, before acquiring the company’s current plant in Theresa in 1922.īack in those days, the local population was heavily German, and the market for a surface-ripened cheese like Brick was high, Joe Widmer related. Joe Widmer is the company’s third-generation owner, and talks with great pride about his family’s history both before the Theresa factory was acquired by his grandparents and the 100 years since then. Widmer’s Cheese Celebrates 100 Years Of Cheesemaking ExcellenceĪward-winning cheese company Widmer’s Cheese Cellars here is celebrating 100 years in business this year, marking both the company’s legacy as well as having an eye on the future. South Dakota State University'sJackrabbit Council
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