From running the pasteurizer to pumping fresh milk to adding the all-important starter culture to putting the cheese in forms and pressing it down, Master Cheesemaker Tony Hook is hands-on when crafting 70 flavors of aged cheddars, blues and mixed milk cheeses that bear the name of Hook’s Cheese.

While family-run Hook’s Cheese only has seven full-time employees, this 8,500-square-foot cheesemaking plant — originally built as a livery stable to the Washington Hotel in 1875 and is on the National Register of Historic Places — has transcended history as one of the first cheese companies in Wisconsin to perfect the art and science of mixed milk cheeses.

Aaron Quick has spent an astounding 34 years perfecting his craft at Sartori’s Antigo Creamery. He is a graduate of the company’s renowned Master Cheesemaker apprenticeship program, achieving the prestigious certification after honing his skills at Sartori for decades.

Making cheese without any automation is a back-breaking, tiring job with a lot of stooping, stirring, manual washing of hoops and so on. When it comes to automation, “zero is not a hero,” for Master Cheesemaker Chris Renard and the team who handle production and packaging for Renard’s Cheese factory in Algoma, Wis.

When something is “grand,” it denotes something “magnificent, the largest/most important item of its kind.”