California To Lead Wisconsin In Cheese Production

Cabernet, purple moon

by John Iander

(CBS 13) MODESTO, Calif. Another batch of award winning cheese starts here at Modesto’s Fiscalini Cheese Company.

Making fine cheese is part art, part patience. Recipes are secret, handling is time consuming, temperature and humidity must be tightly controlled.

This year California will make over two billion - with a "b" - pounds of cheese, and we could pass Wisconsin as cheese leader maybe next year.

Credit California’s ever increasing dairy production, way past what Wisconsin cows can deliver. And credit also some of the more than 250 different cheeses California now creates.

One of the keys to California’s success is specialty cheeses. There’s even a Cabernet soaked cheese called purple moon. San Joaquin gold cheddar is a huge award winner by cheese maker Mariano Gonzalez.

A few miles away in Turlock, central valley cheese is turning out even more specialty items for various ethnic customers.

Americans now eat thirty plus pounds of cheese per person every year. That's ten times more than a century ago.