MONROE - The best cheeses in southwestern Wisconsin, as judged in March at the 2012 World Championship Cheese Contest, didn't very closely reflect the area's traditional heritage.
The old standbys of Swiss and Muenster got recognition, but many "Best of Class" awards went to relatively newer cheeses in local production: the Hispanic cheeses queso fresco from W & W Dairy and queso para fundir from Decatur Dairy, as well as Greek feta from the Klondike Cheese Company.
W & W Dairy opened with six employees in 2005 to fill a hungry niche for Hispanic cheeses, such as cotija, quesadilla and queso fresco, and soon outgrew a 10,000-square-foot plant.
Now W & W employs 17 and cranks out 150,000 pounds of cheese weekly in a 26,000-square-foot factory on Monroe's north side and expects to grow even more.
The facility has the capacity for weekly production of about 240,000 pounds of cheese, according to co-owner Kevin Wyss. W & W's cheese is sold nationwide under various distributor labels in grocery stores, most popularly in Chicago and across Texas.
So many producers are getting into Hispanic cheese, Wyss said, "it's already starting to be a commodity" - and competition is fierce.
The strength of southwestern Wisconsin's cheese industry may have started when Swiss immigrants settled the area in the 1800s but production has changed dramatically since then to reflect taste trends, new technologies and more recent waves of immigrants.
In the early decades of the last century, Green County had more than 200 cheese factories. Now there are 13 manufacturing plants, according to the University of Wisconsin-Extension.
That's still more cheese factories than in any other county in Wisconsin.
Fewer producers also doesn't equal less cheese. Far from it. Starting with what Adam Buholzer at Klondike calls "the big pizza boom of the '70s," Americans are eating more cheese than ever.
One thing hasn't changed. Cheese from the region - Green and Lafayette counties and just south of the stateline in Illinois - still commands a good reputation in this growing market.
"Our biggest employer is the dairy industry, and what we have in our area is here to stay. It's not going away," said cheesemaker Gary Grossen. "You'll never run out of work in the dairy industry."
And cheese work doesn't wait. As Grossen discussed production trends on the phone Wednesday afternoon, he had to excuse himself for a minute to tend to a batch of juustoleipa, a Finnish cheese with a brown, crusty surface and fresh, squeaky interior.
"I made 285 pounds of it today," said Grossen, a Monroe native who makes small-batch cheeses for Babcock Hall, the University of Wisconsin's campus dairy plant in Madison.
Research on whey proteins and lactose at UW-Madison is changing how area cheesemakers run their operations.
"Back in earlier days, the farmers took the whey out back to feed their hogs," he said, or they spread it on crops.
Now, whey is a moneymaker and reserved for human consumption as dairy researchers discover ever more uses for the cheese byproduct, from Cheetos to protein shakes for bodybuilders.
Increasingly, cheese plants - like Klondike northwest of Monroe - now have their own whey-processing equipment onsite to better market it and retain more of its value in-house.
The value of whey is even figured into the pricing equation for milk, said Adam Buholzer, a fourth-generation cheesemaker at Klondike.
Back in 1970s, Klondike was making colby, Monterey jack and cheddar. They've since discontinued those. Feta became a staple at Klondike in the mid-1980s, along with Muenster, havarti and brick. Early next year, they're planning to start Greek yogurt production.
"Part of our success is our willingness to change," Buholzer said.
Automatization is part of that change. Feta production is almost totally mechanized at Klondike on a German-made machine. Metal arms stir milk, cut the curd and shuffle the soft, Jello-like cubes of uncured feta along a conveyer.
On the packaging end, sleek-looking robotic arms designed by Monroe's Quest Industrial box up the feta, and it's ready to be sent out to grocery chains like Whole Foods.
Eventually, Buholzer says, Klondike wants to fully automate its Muenster and havarti production as well, because hauling slippery logs of cheese out of brine is back-breaking work.
Quest Industrial works with about 15 cheese producers in about a 60-mile radius around Monroe, says founder and president Don Wickstrum, including Alpine Slicing & Cheese Conversion, Decatur Dairy and Grande Cheese. Their robotics also cut cakes at Swiss Colony.
Overall, cheesemaking robots account for 40 to 60 percent of Quest's business.
Robots don't have hair, don't get the flu and effortlessly repeat tasks that can give humans carpal tunnel and stress fatigue. As such, "automation has become huge in cheesemaking. I can't say it's commonplace, but it's becoming more widely accepted," Wickstrum said. "We've got robots that take cheese from brine all the way out to the cooler."
Robots help reduce turnover in a high-turnover industry, he added.
Wyss at W & W Dairy also has plans to eventually add more automation to his production line. On a recent morning at the factory, a metal tube was shooting out 12-ounce patties of queso fresco as fast as workers could bag them.
The old standbys of Swiss and Muenster got recognition, but many "Best of Class" awards went to relatively newer cheeses in local production: the Hispanic cheeses queso fresco from W & W Dairy and queso para fundir from Decatur Dairy, as well as Greek feta from the Klondike Cheese Company.
W & W Dairy opened with six employees in 2005 to fill a hungry niche for Hispanic cheeses, such as cotija, quesadilla and queso fresco, and soon outgrew a 10,000-square-foot plant.
Now W & W employs 17 and cranks out 150,000 pounds of cheese weekly in a 26,000-square-foot factory on Monroe's north side and expects to grow even more.
The facility has the capacity for weekly production of about 240,000 pounds of cheese, according to co-owner Kevin Wyss. W & W's cheese is sold nationwide under various distributor labels in grocery stores, most popularly in Chicago and across Texas.
So many producers are getting into Hispanic cheese, Wyss said, "it's already starting to be a commodity" - and competition is fierce.
The strength of southwestern Wisconsin's cheese industry may have started when Swiss immigrants settled the area in the 1800s but production has changed dramatically since then to reflect taste trends, new technologies and more recent waves of immigrants.
In the early decades of the last century, Green County had more than 200 cheese factories. Now there are 13 manufacturing plants, according to the University of Wisconsin-Extension.
That's still more cheese factories than in any other county in Wisconsin.
Fewer producers also doesn't equal less cheese. Far from it. Starting with what Adam Buholzer at Klondike calls "the big pizza boom of the '70s," Americans are eating more cheese than ever.
One thing hasn't changed. Cheese from the region - Green and Lafayette counties and just south of the stateline in Illinois - still commands a good reputation in this growing market.
"Our biggest employer is the dairy industry, and what we have in our area is here to stay. It's not going away," said cheesemaker Gary Grossen. "You'll never run out of work in the dairy industry."
And cheese work doesn't wait. As Grossen discussed production trends on the phone Wednesday afternoon, he had to excuse himself for a minute to tend to a batch of juustoleipa, a Finnish cheese with a brown, crusty surface and fresh, squeaky interior.
"I made 285 pounds of it today," said Grossen, a Monroe native who makes small-batch cheeses for Babcock Hall, the University of Wisconsin's campus dairy plant in Madison.
Research on whey proteins and lactose at UW-Madison is changing how area cheesemakers run their operations.
"Back in earlier days, the farmers took the whey out back to feed their hogs," he said, or they spread it on crops.
Now, whey is a moneymaker and reserved for human consumption as dairy researchers discover ever more uses for the cheese byproduct, from Cheetos to protein shakes for bodybuilders.
Increasingly, cheese plants - like Klondike northwest of Monroe - now have their own whey-processing equipment onsite to better market it and retain more of its value in-house.
The value of whey is even figured into the pricing equation for milk, said Adam Buholzer, a fourth-generation cheesemaker at Klondike.
Back in 1970s, Klondike was making colby, Monterey jack and cheddar. They've since discontinued those. Feta became a staple at Klondike in the mid-1980s, along with Muenster, havarti and brick. Early next year, they're planning to start Greek yogurt production.
"Part of our success is our willingness to change," Buholzer said.
Automatization is part of that change. Feta production is almost totally mechanized at Klondike on a German-made machine. Metal arms stir milk, cut the curd and shuffle the soft, Jello-like cubes of uncured feta along a conveyer.
On the packaging end, sleek-looking robotic arms designed by Monroe's Quest Industrial box up the feta, and it's ready to be sent out to grocery chains like Whole Foods.
Eventually, Buholzer says, Klondike wants to fully automate its Muenster and havarti production as well, because hauling slippery logs of cheese out of brine is back-breaking work.
Quest Industrial works with about 15 cheese producers in about a 60-mile radius around Monroe, says founder and president Don Wickstrum, including Alpine Slicing & Cheese Conversion, Decatur Dairy and Grande Cheese. Their robotics also cut cakes at Swiss Colony.
Overall, cheesemaking robots account for 40 to 60 percent of Quest's business.
Robots don't have hair, don't get the flu and effortlessly repeat tasks that can give humans carpal tunnel and stress fatigue. As such, "automation has become huge in cheesemaking. I can't say it's commonplace, but it's becoming more widely accepted," Wickstrum said. "We've got robots that take cheese from brine all the way out to the cooler."
Robots help reduce turnover in a high-turnover industry, he added.
Wyss at W & W Dairy also has plans to eventually add more automation to his production line. On a recent morning at the factory, a metal tube was shooting out 12-ounce patties of queso fresco as fast as workers could bag them.