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Red, White and Blue Celebrating American Made Cheeses with Twin Cities Live


Because nothing says "God Bless America" quite like an exceptional wedge of handcrafted cheese made right here on home soil.



Pull up a chair, grab a cracker, and get ready to fall head-over-heels for some of the most spectacular American-made cheeses — and some of the finest happen to be practically in our own backyard. In honor of Twin Cities Live's Red, White & Blue special, we're rolling out a cheese board that's as patriotic as a fireworks show and twice as delicious.

From the rolling dairy farms of Wisconsin to the wide-open fields of central Minnesota to the fog-kissed coast of California, American cheesemakers are crafting wheels and wedges that rival anything Europe has to offer. Let's meet the stars of the show.


🦌 The Stag — Deer Creek Cheese | Sheboygan, Wisconsin

If cheese had a spirit animal, The Stag would be — well — a stag. Bold, majestic, and undeniably American.

This is a true Wisconsin original: a traditional bandage-wrapped, 22-pound daisy wheel cheddar that has been named one of Culture Magazine's "101 Best Cheeses of the Year" and taken home five first-place wins at the American Cheese Society. Not bad for a cheese that started as a carefully selected batch of The Fawn cheddar put out to pasture for a little extra aging.

The Stag is aged for at least 17 months, during which it transforms into something truly spectacular. Expect strong toffee and butterscotch notes upfront, a sweet and creamy finish, and — here's the fun part — a satisfying crystalline crunch (cheese diamonds!)as the aging process creates those gorgeous protein crystals cheese lovers dream about. The milk comes from a special corner of Wisconsin where ancient glacial lobes once converged and receded, giving the terroir a character all its own.

Flavor vibes: Buttered popcorn on the nose, bright lemon curd acidity that rolls into rich toffee and cured meat. Crunchy. Complex. Completely addictive.

Perfect with: Dried cranberries, blackberries, a charcuterie spread, and a good stout or amber beer. This is the cheese that makes people stop mid-conversation to say, "Wait — what is that?"


🌾 Saint Anthony — Redhead Creamery | Brooten, Minnesota

Plot twist: one of the most exciting cheeses in the country is being made by a natural redhead on a family dairy farm in central Minnesota, and it all started as a happy accident.

Alise Sjostrom — founder, head cheesemaker, and lifelong farm kid — accidentally created Saint Anthony when a batch of her clothbound cheddar didn't quite go according to plan. Instead of scrapping it, she let it age and came back to something extraordinary. Saint Anthony has been a fan favorite ever since, and it's not hard to see why. In 2019 it won second in it's category of "American Originals" by The American Cheese Society!

This washed-rind cheese is aged for two or more months and delivers a flavor profile that's equal parts approachable and quietly bold. Think rich, savory depth with hints of cellar earthiness, like buttered toast fresh from a cozy kitchen. The meaty undertones channel cured salami, while the texture stays smooth and creamy all the way through. It even earned a Silver Medal at the prestigious Guild of Fine Food's World Cheese Awards — placing 7th among all U.S. entries in its category.

Redhead Creamery has been crafting award-winning farmstead cheeses since 2014, right on Jer-Lindy Farms, where roughly 200 cows are milked using robotic systems and the milk flows directly into the creamery. From farm to wheel in the most literal sense.

Flavor vibes: Washed-rind wonder. Savory, creamy, earthy, with a kiss of funk and a lot of heart.

Perfect with: Cured meats, pickled veggies, crusty bread, and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc or a robust red blend.


🍇 Pecuri in i Vigne — Blakesville Creamery | Port Washington, Wisconsin

Now this is a showstopper. One glance at this cheese and your cheese board just became art.

Pecuri in i Vigne — which translates from Italian as "sheep in the vineyard" — is a delicate, lactic-set fresh sheep's milk cheese wrapped by hand in grape leaves soaked in Antoine Arena's Corsican muscat wine. It's a 4-ounce puck of pure poetry, crafted by head cheesemaker Veronica Pedraza at Blakesville Creamery, a woman-owned farmstead operation nestled along the shores of Lake Michigan.

Veronica was inspired by the European tradition of wrapping fresh cheeses in grape or chestnut leaves, and the result is something that feels both ancient and completely original. The sheep's milk base is fresh, fluffy, silky, and tangy with a naturally high acidity, while the wine-soaked leaves impart sweet floral notes, mild fruity tang, and a gorgeous earthy perfume. Every bite is an intriguing mix of savory, sweet, and slightly wild.

Blakesville is primarily known for their exceptional goat cheeses, but their foray into sheep's milk — made possible through a collaboration with dairy sheep expert Mariana Marques de Almeida — has produced something truly special. This cheese is a conversation starter, a centerpiece, and a revelation all in one tiny package. It's also an American Cheese Society award winner, because of course it is.

Flavor vibes: Fresh hay, sun-dried grape leaves, sweet sheep's milk, and a floral muscat kiss. Creamy, delicate, and unforgettable.

Perfect with: Fresh bread, olives, dried fruit, or just your undivided attention.


🌿 Quinta — Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Co. | Point Reyes Station, California

If The Stag is the rugged frontiersman of this cheese board, Quinta is the poet. Delicate, aromatic, and breathtakingly beautiful — this is the cheese that makes people reach for their phones to take a picture before they take a bite.

Quinta (pronounced KEEN-tah) is a soft-ripened, bloomy rind cheese handcrafted at Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Co. in Marin County, California — a third-generation family farm perched above Tomales Bay, one hour north of San Francisco, where the air carries salt from the Pacific and the organic pastures are kissed with coastal fog each morning. The Giacomini family has been farming this land since 1959, and in 2000, sisters Diana, Lynn, and Jill turned their family dairy into one of America's most celebrated creameries. Today it's 100% women-owned and proudly WBENC certified.

Quinta honors that heritage in the most gorgeous way. Each small round is wrapped in spruce bark infused with California Bay Laurel — an herb that grows wild and abundant right on the farm — and crowned on top with an actual Bay Laurel leaf pressed into the fluffy, pillowy rind. The result looks like something a woodland fairy might bring to a dinner party. When younger, the interior is silky-smooth with flavors of fresh creamery butter that open into woodsy-mustard and wild mushroom notes, with a herbal Bay Laurel finish that's uniquely Californian. As the wheel matures, the center softens to spoonable, oozy bliss, and the flavor deepens considerably. The rind itself? Eat it. The earthy, mushroomy Bay Laurel notes are even more pronounced there.

It took Double Gold at the 2025 California State Fair Cheese Competition. Enough said.

Flavor vibes: Fresh butter, wild mushroom, woodsy herbs, and a California coastal earthiness that you simply cannot replicate anywhere else on earth.

Perfect with: A small spoon, room temperature, and people you love. Serve with honey, crusty sourdough, or thin crackers and let it do all the talking.


🍫 The Bonus Bite: A Sweet Finish with STED Chocolate

Because this celebration deserves a grand finale, we're adding one more element to the table — and this one is for your sweet tooth.

Picture this: a pine needle and orange zest shortbread round, topped with Point Reyes Quinta and a square of dark chocolate from STED Foods in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. Let that combination sink in for a moment

Sted was founded in 2013 by husband-and-wife team Josh and Kristin Mohagen — Kristin with her pastry background, Josh with a soul shaped by communal cooking in Cameroon and time in the French Alps. Together they built something extraordinary right in lake-country Fergus Falls: a full bean-to-bar operation that sources fair-trade, USDA Organic certified cacao from small farms and stone-grinds it in small batches in their 7,000-square-foot Minnesota facility. No fillers, no soy lecithin, no palm oil, no shortcuts. In Norwegian, "STED" means "place" — and every bar they make is a celebration of exactly that: the place the cacao comes from, and the Minnesota place it's made.

The shortbread-and-STED pairing alongside the Quinta? Think of it as the period at the end of a very, very good sentence. You've moved through bold aged cheddar, funky washed rinds, delicate sheep's milk, ethereal bark-wrapped brie — and now you land here, in the sweet, pine-kissed arms of a Minnesota chocolate maker. That's what American-made tastes like.


🥂 The Special Happytizer: A Bite to Remember

Before the main event, kick things off with what we're calling the Star-Spangled Happytizer Bite — and yes, "happytizer" is absolutely a word now.

The build:

  • Raincoast Crisps as your base (those gorgeous, seed-studded crackers that make everything look and taste fancy)

  • A lush slice or dollop of Pecuri in i Vigne from Blakesville Creamery — that gorgeous grape-leaf wrapped sheep's milk beauty

  • A spoonful of Janet's Finest Compote plopped on top

Now here's where it gets good. Janet's Finest is a women-owned, small-batch compote company with roots in a Midwest mom's kitchen — founded by Janet Fuhrken of Kansas City, Missouri, now based right here in St. Paul. For over 25 years, they've been slow-cooking handcrafted fruit preserves made with the finest berries and a signature jalapeño kick that they lovingly describe as "Midwestern spicy." The heat sneaks in gently at the end, complementing rather than competing with the fruit. Their compotes are non-GMO, gluten-free, plant-based, and made without preservatives. In fact, they just took home a 2026 SOFI Gold Award for excellence in taste and innovation. These are not your grandma's preserves — well, actually, they kind of are, and that's exactly the point.

Draped over the creamy, floral tang of the Pecuri in i Vigne on a crisp, seedy cracker? That sweet heat meets earthy sheep's milk meets crunchy cracker is a little three-second fireworks show for your mouth. Red, white, and blue indeed. 🇺🇸

🧀 The Bottom Line

American cheese — and American chocolate — are having an absolute moment, and it's been earned. From Wisconsin's glacially terroir'd cheddar caves to a creamery in the Minnesota cornfields that's also making artisan spirits from whey, from the fog-wrapped dairy pastures of coastal California to a bean-to-bar chocolate factory in the lakes country of Fergus Falls, our homegrown makers are doing things that make the world take notice. This Twin Cities Live Red, White & Blue special, we say: skip the import aisle and celebrate the extraordinary talent that's practically in our own dairy-rich backyard.

Support local. Eat great cheese. Be American about it. 🧀🇺🇸

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AND don't forget: for 10% off your purchase on Cheese Grotto, enter FORAGETOFROMAGE at checkout!






 
 
 
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