Each year, Martha Stewart and her team of editors celebrate 10 American artisans for their unique contributions to food, style, design, and technology at their American Made Summit. This year, one of our personal favorite cheeseheads, Andy Hatch of Uplands Cheese Company, was named one of Martha Stewart’s 2016 American Makers.

Martha Stewart’s American Made honors the American entrepreneurial spirit by celebrating small business owners. Uplands Cheese is in good company with other 2016 winners such as Girls Who Code, a non-profit dedicated to closing the tech industry’s gender gap, and Stony Creek Colors, a company creating natural alternatives to synthetic colors used for textiles. “I’d like to thank Martha Stewart and the editors of Martha Stewart Living for not only valuing the quality of our cheese, but also for recognizing that our success can serve as an example to other family farms looking to add value to their milk,” said Hatch at last month’s awards ceremony.

Uplands is most famous for its Alpine-style Pleasant Ridge Reserve, the single most decorated cheese in America and the only cheese to have won top awards at both the American Cheese Society Judging and Competition and the United States Championship Cheese Contest. The company also crafts Rush Creek Reserve, a gooey, bark-wrapped wheel that Uplands famously stopped producing from 2014 to 2015 due to the FDA’s conflicting opinions on aging cheese on wooden boards. 

Thankfully, the FDA backed down from their arguably anti-artisan stance and Rush Creek Reserve came back to us in 2015. This year’s batch will be released on November 14th—grab a wheel and toast to Uplands’ achievement! 

Feature Photo Courtesy of Uplands Cheese Company

Kara Kaminski-Killiany

​Kara is a Michigan cheesemaker, writer, and freelance behavioral economist who can’t get enough bloomy rind cheeses that perfectly melt just below the rind. She is happiest when tending goats, discovering unique cheese flavors from new sources, and decoding the puzzles of human behavior.​