Monroe is the seat of Green County, the heart of cheesemaking in Wisconsin. It is such an integral part of the community that Monroe High School athletics are The Cheesemakers. Cheese has been produced in Green County since 1841 and now leads Wisconsin’s production of 2.6 billion pounds of cheese each year.1 To learn more about our cheesemaking heritage, MTC travelled down to the National Historic Cheesemaking Center outside of Monroe.
The
building itself is an old railroad depot, but now holds the entire
history of Wisconsin’s cheese industry. Lead by our tour guide Virgil,
we got a fascinating look into how it all started with a few Swiss
immigrants finding their niche in southern Wisconsin. In fact, Green
County still claims over 20% Swiss heritage and over 30% German
heritage.2 Virgil
had some great personal stories about the long line of cheesemakers and
gave an excellent tour that I would highly recommend.
Any Monroe native will insist that you try the Limburger sandwich (now only made in the United States by the Chalet Cheese Co-op) and for only $3, why not? Wash it down with a local Huber Bock and you’ve got one hell of a lunch!
After lunch, we walked the two blocks over to the Minhas Craft Brewery, the second oldest continuous-running brewery in the country. Never heard of it? There’s a few reasons. First, when the brewery was bought by Canadian siblings Manjit and Ravinder Minhas in 2006, they renamed it from Huber Brewery to Minhas Brewery. Second reason is that despite producing 300,000 barrels per annum, 85% of their production goes straight to Canada.3 Besides Huber Bock, I’ve never tried anything from Minhas, so we were curious to check it out.
But despite the disappointing brewery tour, Monroe was a great location and full of history and culture. The drive down from Madison was incredibly scenic and we had a lot of fun. Now I’m just counting down to Cheese Days....
Minhas makes some of the worst beers known to man. If the bottle or can says 'Made in Monroe, WI' stay far away.
ReplyDeleteI can't wait for Cheese Days! Did you know that Cheese Days' mascot (Wedgie) has his own facebook page? https://www.facebook.com/WedgieCheeseDaysMascot :D
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