FAQ About How We Make Our Cheese

Learn all about our cheese and the local milk that we use to make our cheese.

Where does Rosewood Dairy (Renard’s Cheese) get our milk from?
All of the milk used to make our cheeses comes from small, local Door and Kewaunee County family farms. Many of these farms are second and third generation, and have been with Renard’s Cheese since 1961 .
What type of cows do you get the milk from?
90-95% of our milk comes from Holstein cows and the rest of the milk is from Guernsey or Jersey cows.
Are the cows grass fed?
The cows are grass fed as the Wisconsin climate allows. They’re also fed a mixture of wheat and grains to enable them to produce the highest quality milk.
Is the milk hormone-free?
All of our milk is free of hormones (rBGH free). The farms that we get our milk from each certify that their milk is free from the genetically engineered hormone rBGH.
How much milk does it take to make one pound of cheese?
You may be surprised and the answer might even help justify spending a little more for our handcrafted cheeses. Each pound of cheese requires 10 pounds (or about 5 quarts) of cow’s milk. That’s a lot of milk!!
What kinds of cultures does Renard’s Cheese use when making cheese?
The first stage in making cheese is to ripen the milk. During the ripening process, lactose is converted into lactic acid. Cheese makers use starter cultures to control this ripening process. We use both thermophillic and mesophillic cultures. Which culture we use depends on the type of cheese we are making.
Mesophillic is a non-heat loving culture, and is used for making cheeses that are not heated to more than 102 degrees. This is the most common and is used to make 90% of the varieties of cheeses. Some of these cheeses include soft cheese, blue cheese, feta, farmers, colby, cheddar, brie and others.
Thermophillic is a heat loving culture and is used to make cheeses that can be heated to 130 degrees. It is used in most Italian cheeses, such as parmesan, provolone, mozzarella, swiss, monterey jack, etc.
What makes the cheese yellow? Is there dye in your cheese?
Our coloring comes from all natural annatto seeds. We do not use any chemical dyes. Annatto is a food coloring derived from the seeds of achiote tree, which is native to tropical regions from Mexico to Brazil. It is often used to impart a yellow or orange color to foods.