If you walk into Roelli Cheese Haus near Shullsburg in southwest Wisconsin, you’ll see plenty of succulent Wisconsin cheeses — but not Little Mountain, the company’s champion cheese. It lives behind the counter, with nary a sign.
Little Mountain, described by its maker as a “classic upland style from Switzerland,” is not contraband, but Roelli is practically running on empty after a “Best of Show” at the American Cheese Society contest in July. “We feel pretty honored,” says company owner Chris Roelli, noting that Little Mountain bested 1,842 other cheeses in the competition.
Although Roelli is a fourth-generation cheesemaker, in creating the recipe and honing the details of microbiology, timing and equipment, he got assistance from the Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “For us as a small business, tapping the experience at CDR was invaluable,” he says. “It accelerated our path to bring this cheese to the market, literally by years.”
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