Sid Cook started making cheese at twelve. Got his cheesemaker's license at sixteen. Bought his own plant at thirty-something. Forty years later, he has won more national and international cheese awards than any other cheesemaker in North America. The number is over 850. It keeps growing.
The Cook family has been making cheese in southwestern Wisconsin since 1883, when Sid's great-great-uncle Ed Lepley started making cheese in Richland County. Sid's parents, Sam and Merna, bought the Irish Valley Cheese Factory in Plain, Wisconsin in 1944 for $500. Sid grew up in the apartment connected to that plant. "When you opened the kitchen door, there was the plant," he has said. He was riding his tricycle around the cheese vats before he could read.
Carr Valley Cheese itself dates to 1902, an independent small-town cheese factory in La Valle, Wisconsin, that had been quietly making commodity cheese for most of a century. Sid bought it in 1986. He has spent the decades since transforming it from a commodity plant into the most decorated artisan cheesemaker in the United States.
What it means to win 850 awards.
Most of those awards came from a focused strategy: do not just make the same cheeses everyone else is making. Cook was the first American cheesemaker to produce a mixed-milk cheese combining cow, sheep, and goat milk. That cheese eventually became Menage, still one of Carr Valley's bestsellers. He has invented cheese categories that did not exist.
Cocoa Cardona: a goat's milk cheese rubbed in cocoa powder, giving it a brown rind and a subtle chocolate-adjacent flavor. Cave Aged Marisa: a sheep's milk cheese aged in the cellar, which won Super Gold at the 2018 World Cheese Awards in Norway. Bread Cheese: a Finnish-inspired oven-baked cheese with a caramelized crust. Six-year-aged cheddar served on warm apple pie, which Sid has publicly named his favorite pairing. The list keeps going.
The scale.
Carr Valley is small by industrial-dairy standards and large by artisan standards. Sid now operates four cheese plants and eight retail stores across Wisconsin. The milk comes from 30 cow-dairy farms local to La Valle, a goat farm within one mile of the plant, and a sheep-milk cooperative in northern Wisconsin. Cook pays a premium for the milk on purpose: "Carr Valley purchases milk at a premium price to ensure that these small farms stay in business."
Cheesemaking is the perfect marriage of art and science. It is positively amazing how complex and diverse cheese can be using only four simple, wholesome ingredients. Milk, cultures, rennet, salt. That is it.
Their curds.
The flagship is the aged cheddar, but Carr Valley makes real cheese curds. Fresh, squeaky, white cheddar curds in the traditional Wisconsin style, plus flavored varieties. They sell at the retail stores and ship nationally through their online shop. The Wisconsin Cheese Mart and other specialty retailers carry the broader Carr Valley line.
Why this recognition.
Carr Valley qualifies for Heritage tier on the strength of their 124-year continuous operation, Sid Cook's Master Cheesemaker certification, and an award record that has no peer in American cheesemaking. They are a strong candidate for Master tier promotion in the 2027 review. They meet all six pillars of the Real Wisconsin Cheese Curd Standard.
