In a wedge of an industrial park as unpretentious as the Ritz
Carlton (to which they sell cheese) is lavish, you’ll find a pair of cheesemakers
up to their elbows stirring their curds and whey.
Out back, there isn’t some Gateway-colored Holsteins grazing green pastures
but an asphalt expanse with some guy bending over with baggy jeans —
you get the picture — adjusting a nozzle on some drywall applicator.
On one side of the wedge is a place that makes sedatives for wolves, on
the other a cleaning company. MouCo Cheese Company’s place of business in north Fort Collins is as
out of place as Martha in a West Virginia prison. But like Martha, MouCo
caters to farmers’ market fanatics and the rich and famous alike. After
all, it was the cheese of choice for macaroni magnate Johnny Carino’s
Christmas party last year and is the cheese that Kofi Annan and other
United Nations dignitaries turn to when world peace discussions turn sour. Touring MouCo, which you can do by appointment only, won’t wow you. That’s
because if the tour truly reflected what MouCo does, 95 percent of the
tour would show employees cleaning up their mess and 5 percent would be
dedicated to making the cheese. But owner Robert Poland, who with wife Birgit Halbreiter sold the company’s
first rounds to Beaver’s Market in 2001, and cheese maker Josh Beck do
their best to educate and entertain. What you won’t see are Holsteins and Jerseys being milked out back, that’s
done on some local farm, or the cheese being made, health officials would
have a coronary. But Robert and Josh will regale you with chessemaking
bloopers like when valves go haywire and milk is flowing around the surgery-clean
room like champagne in the locker room after the Super Bowl. They will explain the art of transforming stinky curdled milk into a
palate-pleasing delicacy and the environmental ethics that the company
uses to churn out 80,000 cheese rounds a year to places like the Ritz,
Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas and high-powered restaurants such as Tracy
O’Graddy in Washington D.C. and Tru Restaurant in Chicago. And you will
get to taste the only two cheeses they make — MouCo Camembert and ColoRouge,
which this year earned a gold medal from the American Cheese Society. Everything is simple around this business, which at 1,875 square feet
is about the size of an average Fort Collins home, except the cheese.
The sign on the door is a legal-size piece of paper, the office furniture
includes an old chair with a plaid throw over it, a foot stool with a
tie-dyed cover and Poland’s electric guitar that he uses as a diversion
from the cleaning and cheesemaking. The day I was there, Poland’s attire
consisted of a Big Hairy Dog baseball cap worn backwards, T-shirt the
color of milk, plaid flannel pajama pants the color of a Holstein and
rubber boots that matched his T-shirt. In keeping with MouCo’s down-on-the-farm
attitude, when you phone MouCo, Poland likely will answer. The cheese is a more complex matter. Birgit’s father Franz has spent
half a decade perfecting cheese making. Birgit is a trained dairy specialist.
Robert has fun with fermentation. Together, they guard the company’s success,
which lies in a family secret of how to ripen the cheese, which takes
place in just 12 days. Though the tour is nothing special, the people, atmosphere and the cheese,
which is available at Whole Foods and Wild Oats, are, make this place
worthy of a visit. If you get lost finding the joint, just look for the
last place you would imagine cheese to be made. | 
