I grew up to believe that potatoes came from Idaho, Cars from Michigan, and Cheese from Wisconsin >in the USA< or it’s appropriate namesake country >Swiss cheese form Switzerland<. My over generalized logic to cheese was altered when California began running media based promotions of our own state made cheese. You name it, they ran it. Commercials saying “why did you come to California? Why for the cheese of course.”
Further inspection of general supermarkets >not the big fancy ones that import from europe< lets me see that there is hardly any cheese from other areas, Wisconsin included.
Does every State promote/produce their own cheese? Which States make cheese? It does seem more economical to make your own cheese then ship it in from other areas, but does that mean there’s 50 different State-made cheeses out there?
The fact that Wisconsin is “America’s Dairyland” started out as a media-based promotion years and years ago by the state dairy board just the same as California’s current ads. Eventually it took on a life of its own, just the same as DeBeers “a diamond is forever” slogan.
Cheese isn’t that hard to make and I would imagine that there are dairy farms and local cheese factories in every state in the Union with the possible exception of Alaska. Wisconsin was the country’s leading dairy producer for most of the 20th century until California caught up to it in the 1990s so it certainly had the right to the label “America’s Dairyland”.
I imagine that you find only California cheese in California supermarkets because California does produce a lot of cheese and it is likely cheaper than cheese from other regions of the country because transportation costs are cheaper. I imagine that California dominates the West Coast “cheese market” and Wisconsin dominates the Central U.S. I believe that New York is the third biggest dairy state and if you are on the East Coast I bet you see a lot of New York cheese.
AFAIK, Wisconsin & California are the only states that seem to have a superior attitudes as to the quality of their cheese. I have a sneaking suspicion California’s cheese envy has something to do with those 3 Wisconsin Rose Bowl victories over California schools during the 90s.
I ran a quick search on google, and here’s what I came up with from the website of Cheese Market News, a newspaper dedicated to the Cheese and Dairy/Deli Industry. I’m not kidding.
There are 20 “milk producing” states. That is, states with raw milk production greater than one million pounds per month. (Yes, they measure production in pounds, not gallons.) Wherever you have significant milk production, there’s cheese to be made! The states include New York, Pennsylvannia, Vermont, Florida, Kentucky, Virginia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Wisconsin, Arizona, Idaho, New Mexico, Texas, California, Washington. By far, California is the greatest producer, with Wisconsin second, and New York a distant third.
I’m sure cheese is produced in other dairy states, but the production is apparently insignificant by comparison. For example, my own home state of New Hampshire produces small quantities, but at such small scale, it doesn’t register.
Just some anecdotal info from New York State. There are a lot of New York cheeses in our grocery store, and store-brand cheeses are all made in NY, but you can also find a wide selection of comparably-priced cheese from Wisconsin, including cheese from a dairy run by my grandmother’s sister’s branch of the family . . . It’s a small, small world.
Although California may make more cheese than Wisconsin (after all they are 2 1/2 times bigger than us), Wisconsin is definitely the leader in quality.
As evidence allow me to present the 2000 World Cheese Championships.
