Third-generation cheesemaker Joe Widmer can boast of more bonafide cheese lineage than almost anyone in America (and even most in Wisconsin). Joe’s grandfather John Widmer, a Swiss-born immigrant, began making Brick cheese in 1922, a tradition the company upholds to this day. Tradition is ingrained at Widmer’s; Joe still works from the same milk vats his grandfather purchased; he presses his cheese with the same real bricks. Along with six siblings, Joe was raised in the quarters above the cheesemaking room, where he resides to this day. It makes, he would tell you, for a short commute.
The story of Widmer’s begins with Brick cheese, a true Wisconsin original; first created in 1877 by another Swiss immigrant, John Jossi, who found himself living amongst the largely German population of 19th-century Wisconsin. Having married into the cheesemaking business (as one does in Wisconsin), Jossi modeled his new creation after the German Limburger, but used bricks to press out the whey for a firmer, milder cheese. Jossi’s Brick was a hit amongst the funk-loving Germans and a key player in the burgeoning Wisconsin dairy scene that would eventually become the fifth largest dairy production market in the world.
