• by Amy Corr , Staff Writer @MediaPostOTL, June 14, 2010

Florida has oranges and key lime pie. Maryland has crab cakes. Idaho has potatoes. And Wisconsin has cheese. Get ready for imagery guaranteed to make your mouth water, unless you're lactose-intolerant.

If you're a fan of reality cooking programs like "Top Chef," then you're familiar with a task commonly given to contestants: turning a classic comfort food into a highbrow gourmet meal.

Shine Advertising, agency of record for the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, promoted Wisconsin cheese by reinventing the grilled cheese sandwich with the Grilled Cheese Academy.

The Web site showcases a whopping 30 grilled cheese sandwiches made with various Wisconsin cheeses. Clicking on the sandwich directory gives you the sandwich name and type of Wisconsin cheese used, but clicking on the numbers provides foodies with money shots of delicious sandwiches and detailed links to recipes. My favorites are Buffalo Bill (#5), Appleton (#13) and Lisa Marie (#19).

The site was concepted and created in three months and uses Facebook Connect so visitors can post their grilled cheese recipes to the Grilled Cheese Academy Gallery along with their Facebook pages.

The Grilled Cheese Academy is a follow-up to the Cheese & Burger Society, an equally eye-catching site created last year by Shine that pairs Wisconsin cheeses with beef patties and various accoutrements.

This year's site is being promoted through Google AdWords, Facebook ads and a sponsorship of Tasting Table's national, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York e-newsletters.

Members of Shine, the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, and Chef Tory Miller created the 30 selected recipes. To date, more than 100 additional recipes have been added to the academy gallery.

"Our biggest challenge was making sure we created recipes that were interesting enough to captivate an audience -- yet easy enough to make, that they are not intimidating," said Mike Kriefski co-founder and creative director of Shine. "The ultimate goal of this site is to increase awareness of Wisconsin Cheese as being some of the best cheeses in the world. Given the newness of this site, it's still too early to say whether this tactic has 'moved the needle,'" concluded Kriefski.