The Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin

Steve Stettler

there’s a tendency when talking to outsiders—journalists, authors, other laypeople—to put a pretty face on the Wisconsin dairy industry. It’s good marketing, and someone’s got to sing its praises. Master cheesemaker Steve Stettler, however, isn’t one to shy away from straight talk. “It’s a tough business,” Stettler says. “The small cheese factories, it’s going to be tough. The market right now is extremely high. You have all the day traders, this thing with the milk futures and all that are impacting our pricing. It’s not only hard on the cheesemaker, it’s hard on the people in sales, and your buyers. That whole market right now is not very stable.” Stettler looks at a market with good cheese sales and sees the other side of things: feed prices are high, fuel prices are high, and the amount of gyration has increased dramatically in recent years. “The instability is a tough thing right now,” Stettler says. “I’ve made cheese for over thirty years. It used to be if the market moved three cents, it was a huge deal. And now it moves a dime.” Stettler is constantly keeping up with new trends that sweep the industry. Growth hormone–free milk may be one of the future proWt centers for cheesemaking, Stettler suggests. “Right now, all the Xuid Steve Stettler Decatur Dairy, Brodhead, Wisconsin http://www.decaturdairy.com/ QW Master of havarti, muenster, brick, and farmer I was nineteen years old when my dad o¤ered me part of the company. And there are very few guys who get a chance to buy into a company at the age of nineteen. Steve Stettler, inside Decatur Dairy in Green County. 39 milk is tending to go rBGH free,” he says. “So I see a huge demand in the cheese market for product that is rBGH free. But do you get in right away, or do you wait?” Stettler is a hands-on cheesemaker (“I’m not an oªce guy, let’s go with that,” he says when asked about which side of the business he enjoys), and he’s built up his business by making award-winning cheese and Wghting to make sure his people stay connected to the product. “I didn’t go full automation—because I always want them to be stickin’ their hands in it—so I don’t have automatic cutters,” he says. “We check the cut and do that by hand, instead of just relying on timers. I still want the cheesemaking aspect of adding ingredients and checking the curd. If your milk has a di¤erent acid, your vats will react a little di¤erent. Even before we pump it, we stick our hands in to feel the curd and make sure it is what it’s supposed to be.” Stettler’s been cheesemaker and co-op manager for the Decatur Dairy factory since 1982, and he’s dealt with a lot of issues other than the quality of the cheese being shipped from his plant. In a world of leveraged buyouts, multinational corporations, and hedge funds, the phrase “dairy co-op” has an almost charming ring to it. But co-ops are businesses, too; they’re not magically conXict free. 40 Masters of Green County Corn that has stayed on the stalk along County Road D between Madison and Belleville. “About a year ago this time, they were trying to Wre me,” Stettler says of his co-op board. “It’s a complicated issue. The old board was led to believe I wasn’t returning all the money they were entitled to. And the majority of the farmers were happy with what they were getting, because it was more than they’d get anywhere else. The bottom line was we all spent a lot of money to Wnd out that they probably owed me some money.” On top of making cheese, wrestling with the ins and outs of being part of a co-op, and dealing with sales, Stettler also tries to stay at the top of cheesemaking’s steep learning curve. When he went into making havarti, he studied with makers in Europe to get an Old World perspective on the cheese. “I was kind of amazed—they were really friendly and opened their doors up,” Stettler says. “The little cheese plants would show me what kind of cultures to use, if...