Wisconsin may be known for cheese, but look no further than the Buckeye State to find one family that has earned the title of America's Best Cheese.
“Out of 5,255 entries from 35 states, we're number one,” Ursula Guggisberg-Bennett said.
Tucked along the Amish country-side of Holmes County you'll find the Guggisbergs. Their family tradition of cheesemaking began in the 1940s when Margaret and Alfred Guggisberg arrived from Switzerland.
“He noticed that the palate in America is a little bit different from that of the palate in Europe. They like a very strong, robust, very flavorful Swiss Cheese where here in America, we like a mild cheese, so he set out to create a Swiss that had a very good Swiss flavor that was a little bit more flavorful to the mild palate, so he worked and experimented and came up with the recipe for Baby Swiss. And it is a smaller wheel than what a traditional wheel is. It has smaller eyes and his wife Margaret looked at the wheel and said, 'Oh. It's a Baby Swiss,'” she said.
Milk is brought in from local farms before being combined with culture, calcium and other ingredients. This creates the curd. After a series of steps the curd is pressed and cut into cheese molds. The cheese spends 20 hours in a warm room before being lowered into salt brines, dried and aged to perfection.
“You're competing against the best of the best. There are amazing cheesemakers out there and we are really honored,” she said.
This month the Guggisbergs took home the top prize at World Championship Cheese Contest in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
“We actually have won this award. We won it back in 2015 with our premium Swiss, so this year it's really exciting to have won with the Baby Swiss,” she said.
With the United States and world contests alternating, Ursula and the team have their fingers crossed going into next year.