There’s a tiny little cheese factory in Mineral Point, Wisconsin. It has limited capacity, and they like it that way. Rather than focusing on the strip-mined blocks of orange stuff you find in your supermarket, the make really, really good cheese. World class cheese. World championship-winning cheese.
It’s humble-looking exterior belays a spotless interior; two giant stainless steel troughs fill up most of the big room, and when you stop by in the afternoon on Friday, a couple in big rubber boats and lab coats are sterilizing everything.
Hook’s Cheese is one of the many things I love about Wisconsin. I love it that an artisan cheesemaker can make a living in the land of the giants. While Altadena Dairy in California is worrying about Milk Crate Abuse (seriously), Tony and Julie Hook quietly make some of the best cheese in the world in an old sandstone building in a town of about 2,400 people.
Hook’s cheddar is razor sharp. The patience to wait five…seven….ten years is amazing. But twelve year…and now fifteen year…that’s dedication. At forty-five bucks a pound, the fifteen year is purchased in tiny little pieces, four to five ounces. We don’t use that to make grilled cheese…that’s three year. It’s eaten in tiny little slivers, just a few molecules that dissolve on your tongue, pass through your soft palate and up into your medial forebrain where happy things happen.
Then there’s the gorgonzola, a wonderful version of the Italian formaggio. It’s like crack, but more addictive. Pasta with walnuts and gorgonzola is my favorite pasta dish in the world. Yeah, it’s that good.
And then there’s my favorite: a stinky blue called Tilston Point. Named for a town in Cheshire, this is a really strong, grainy cheese, pretty crumbly when sliced and amazing with apples or pears.
What does this have to do with canoes? A lot, actually.
You can find a mass-produced canoe, stamped out of polyethylene and held together with chunks of conduit and cheap rivets, paddling it when a pair of $9.95 paddles that double as barbells, and a $7.95 horse-collar life jacket. The experience you have will be exactly what you’d expect; uncomfortable, unsatisfying, and ultimately disappointing. You might think this is what canoeing is all about.
There’s cheese, and there are edible processed cheese products. Velveeta. Kraft Singles. American cheese. If an alien landed on Earth and we gave them Velveeta, they’d wonder why some people are obese. This stuff tastes like nothing.
Ultimately you vote with your dollars. You can get ten pounds of stuff that costs $2.00 a pound, or two pounds of stuff that costs $10.00 a pound. You can get a 1500 square foot house or a 3500 square foot house for the same money. It all depends on what you value; quality or quantity.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover