Madeline Kuhn yanks open a metal door six times her size. A pungent, acidic, yeasty scent comes trailing outward, but her nose is used to it. “I spend a lot of time down here,” she says, as she takes stock of the shelves weighed down with hunks of cheese. Pale yellow wheels on spruce boards line the walls from floor to ceiling—Roth’s Grand Cru Surchoix, the 2016 World Cheese Champion.
“When I was new, I asked if my desk could be in the cellars. I insisted I was totally fine just hanging out here.” She chuckles, then gives a half sigh. “Yeah, that didn’t materialize.”
Still, Kuhn spends much of her day in these rooms. A 29-year-old research and development technician for Emmi Roth, one of Wisconsin’s most decorated cheesemakers for brands like Roth Cheese and others, Kuhn is a licensed cheesemaker herself. America’s Dairyland, fittingly, is the only state in the U.S. that requires a license to make and sell cheese. Though she grew up on a farm with dairy cows, she never tried cheesemaking prior to stepping through Roth’s doors: “I learned—and fast.”
Nearly seven years later, Kuhn’s touch can be found all across the cellars, conveyor belts, copper vats, and steel shelves of Roth’s Monroe, Wisconsin facility. The company, with roots dating back to the 1860s, processes 400,000 pounds of milk every day—that’s 40,000 pounds of cheese, divvied up across a dozen-plus varieties. Though no two days in Kuhn’s life are quite the same,
