The Americanization of Mozzarella : Trends: As Americans learn to love pungent foreign cheeses, our cheese industry is learning to make them.

This town of 1,500 people, originally settled by Scandinavians some 150 years ago, may seem a strange place for an Italian cheese factory.

But on one of Denmark’s back roads, amid rolling green farmland dotted with cows, stands the American headquarters of Aurrichio Cheese Inc. Once a Cheddar cheese factory, the Aurrichio plant is now crowded with millions of pounds of provolone hanging on floor-to-ceiling racks like sausages.

The sprawling plant with the pungent smell of cheese in almost every corner is one of two Wisconsin factories set up by Italy’s largest provolone producer in response to America’s growing quest for more ethnic, stronger-tasting cheese.

Just a half hour away, in the town of Pulaski on the other side of Green Bay, another Aurrichio plant churns out such Italian specialties as Parmesan, fontina, asiago and mascarpone. Five Italian cheese-makers oversee the two plants, which together produce some 25,000 pounds of cheese a day.

While small compared to such cheese-making giants as Kraft USA, Sargento Cheese Co., Tillamook Country Creamery Assn. and Land O’Lakes, Aurrichio’s operations are a good illustration of the nation’s changing taste.

Long considered a bastion of Cheddar, Colby, brick and even those rubbery processed American-cheese slices, the United States is slowly but steadily acquiring a taste for fuller-flavored, creamier cheeses. This follows our growing taste for spicy and more refined foods, from fried mozzarella and pizza topped with goat cheese to the creamy Italian dessert tiramisu.

It is thus no surprise that old cheese plants are now being used to produce brie, Parmesan, chevre and soft, creamy blue cheeses. For instance, Bresse Bleu, a French dairy cooperative, imported French equipment to Watertown, Wis., to convert what was once a brick and Muenster operation to the production of double-cream blue cheeses, brie and goat cheese.

Import quotas and a short shelf-life had been imposing constraints on Bresse Bleu. “It made more sense to make the product here,” says the company’s general manager, Bruno Bardet, whose cheese experience prior to coming to the United States consisted of “eating it two times a day for 20 years.”

At first glance, there is little to tip off visitors that this cheese factory is any different from the 350 other plants in Wisconsin, the nation’s No. 1 cheese-producing state. As in other cheese factories, workers wear white coats and hair nets as they process milk in 25-foot-long stainless-steel tubs.

The employees--all American--begin their work at 5 a.m.; by mid-afternoon the production area is nearly deserted. The only sign that work has been done rests quietly in the corner: three narrow, whey-draining tables stacked high with stainless-steel molds containing brie. The molds, filled only hours before, will be flipped every two to three hours to guarantee even draining.

However, it is the 50-degree curing room, where the brie ends up after being dipped into a brine solution for two hours, that sets the plant apart from its American counterparts. A faint white mist permeates the room. It contains the bacterium Penicillium, which eventually settles on the exterior of the cheese to create the creamy white rind.

About 90 miles away, in the southwest corner of Wisconsin, brie is also being made--by Besnier, one of France’s largest cheese makers. Besnier’s product, sold under the “Tradition de Belmont” label, has become one of the better-selling bries in the United States. In fact, business has been so brisk that the company has opened two other plants in California and plans more expansion as demand grows, either through buying American companies or by opening new plants.

But even as foreigners move in, American firms are expanding their traditional lines. Kraft, for instance, has added havarti, baby Swiss and Gouda to its popular Cracker Barrel line. And Land O’Lakes’ Wisconsin cheese subsidiary, Lake to Lake, is considering adding Edam, Gouda and havarti to its production line.

One of the more highly automated plants in the country, Lake to Lake’s factory in Kiel, Wis., makes about 164,000 pounds of cheese a day (primarily Cheddar) with only eight workers tending the assembly line. At smaller companies, the same number of employees can produce only about one-fifth as much.

The cumbersome slabs of Cheddar cheese curds have to be flipped every 10 minutes to create a dense, dry mass of cheese. Traditionally this arduous task was done by hand, but at Lake to Lake, an elaborate stainless-steel processing line, reminiscent of a Rube Goldberg machine with its crisscrossing pipes, mammoth vats, invisible stirrers, suction tubes and compressors, does it all.

For every Lake to Lake, however, there are scores of smaller companies around the country manually producing one-of-a-kind cheeses, from fresh mozzarella to goat and sheep cheeses. While these cheeses may not account for a large percentage of the industry’s production, their sales are growing at a considerably faster rate than Cheddar, brick and other so-called American cheeses.

“The cheese business is changing quite a bit,” says John May, director of purchasing for dairy and deli at Giant Food Inc., a Washington supermarket chain. “We’re not selling as many processed cheeses such as American cheese. That business is basically flat or even declining a bit. . . . The whole specialty-cheese area is where a good amount of growth is coming from.”

And much of that growth, May adds, is being generated by domestic companies. Business in imported cheeses is declining, largely because the strong value of the dollar has sharply increased the price of foreign cheese.

As is the case with many current trends, aging baby boomers are behind the surge in specialty cheeses. For one thing, many have traveled extensively and tasted the wide variety of sharp-flavored cheeses made on the other side of the Atlantic.

Then there’s the fact of their changing taste buds. “The same thing is happening to cheese that happens to wine,” notes Jim Tillison, the former director of the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Assn. “When you’re 20 years old, you like simple wines, but when you hit 40, you get into California Cabernets. . . . Children enjoy American cheese, but as they get older they want cheese with more snap.”

Laura Chenel, an acclaimed California goat-cheese maker who is regarded as one of the nation’s pioneers in the cheese revolution, confirms this. “You can look at the fast-food level,” she says, “and there are so many more Mexican and Chinese restaurants now, especially compared to 10 to 12 years ago. Then look up a culinary level or two and you’ll find at least one or two American regional restaurants in every city across the country where some young chef is trying new food combinations using American ingredients but in a different way. All of that indicates people are more adventurous in their eating.”

When Chenel first sold her chevre in 1979, there were only two or three companies experimenting with goat cheese. “Now,” she points out, “there are over 60.”

Cheese makers also attribute cheese’s growing popularity to America’s increasingly time-pressed life style. Despite its relatively high fat content, the fact that it’s a good source of calcium makes most consumers regard cheese as a healthful and convenient snack food. It’s no wonder, then, that cheeses of all flavors and forms are being packaged for on-the-go consumers.

Notes Floyd Gaibler, executive director of the National Cheese Institute: “When I first came here in 1988, there was very little string cheese being sold. Now it’s mushroomed so that almost everybody is making mozzarella and Italian-type cheeses and marketing them as snack items.”

The use of the microwave has also spurred cheese sales, particularly processed cheese. A few years ago, Kraft took its Cheez Whiz--a product from the 1950s, originally marketed as a bread spread--and started to promote it as a microwaveable cheese sauce, especially good on vegetables and nachos. The result has been double-digit sales increases every year, says Bob Eckert, Kraft’s executive vice president and general manager for the retail cheese division.

Then there’s the nation’s most popular carry-out food: pizza. Thanks to the sharp growth in its consumption, mozzarella use has risen more than 164% in the last 15 years. Cheddar cheese, on the other hand, has seen per-capita consumption climb by only 75%.

As a result, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that mozzarella now makes up more than 25% of U.S. cheese production. Cheddar, which in 1983 accounted for almost half of all domestic cheese production, now comprises only 40% of the cheese made in the United States.

Overall, the United States is increasing its cheese consumption at the fastest rate in the world, according to Dan Carter Inc., a specialty-food marketing firm that advises a large number of cheese companies. In 1954, per-capita consumption was 7.5 pounds; 20 years later it was 14.4 pounds. In 1988, it had grown to 25 pounds. Even so, America has a long way to go before it catches up with France, where consumption averaged 47 pounds per person in 1984, according to a report by the Manhattan marketing and research firm Find-SVP.

Ironically, the growth in American cheese consumption comes amid concerns about the healthfulness of foods high in fat. While dietitians caution consumers to limit the amount of fat they eat to 30% of their daily calories, most natural cheeses, such as Cheddar, blue, Gouda, brie and provolone, typically derive between 66% and 75% of their calories from fat.

Concerned that health-conscious consumers will turn away from cheese, domestic manufacturers are devoting hundreds of thousands of dollars to product research. Each year, dozens of new low-fat cheeses are produced, but to date, they have gained only a fraction of the market, probably no more than 1%, Gaibler estimates. The reason is simple: With less fat and usually less salt as well, the cheese also has considerably less taste.

Whether low or high in fat, cheese produced in America will not be as strong-tasting as that found abroad. Repeatedly, European cheese makers note that they have considerably toned down the taste of the American versions.

“When we first came, we made provolone a lot more like the Italian one--very, very dry and hard,” says Errico Aurrichio, president of the U.S. operations. “We found out that the people here didn’t like it that way. They wanted something more soft. So we changed it. We also don’t age it as long as we do in Italy. We could, but the market doesn’t want that kind of strong flavor.”

The same is true of American brie and the creamy blue-veined cheeses, says Paul Bensabat, executive vice president of Besnier USA Inc. “The French like strong-smelling and strong-tasting cheeses. Americans usually like milder cheeses so we try in all of our cheeses not to make them too sharp.” And Besnier has just introduced a new version of brie that doesn’t have the rind that many Americans find offensive. Called “Wee Brie,” the cheese is a blend of Cheddar and brie.

In many ways, today’s rise in specialty-cheese production harks back to the beginnings of the American cheese industry in the 19th Century, when immigrants set up factories to recreate the cheeses they had eaten in their native lands.

The Swiss, for instance, were among the first foreign groups in Wisconsin to develop their well-known cheese. From the French came American blue, while the Dutch developed Edam and Gouda. The Germans brought Muenster and Limburger, and Cheddar came from the English.

Gradually, however, as American demand for cheese increased and as the immigrants’ offspring lost touch with their homelands, the distinct regional characteristics began to get lost, and people began producing cheese in high volume, says Andrea Neu, director of consumer and trade relations for the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board. The result was mass production of cheeses such as Cheddar, which could be made easily and quickly and in high-enough volume to meet demand.

“Now,” says Neu, “as Americans have the luxury to look for special tastes, there is an opportunity for cheese makers to go back to making and marketing those cheeses that set them apart from the high-volume cheeses.”