Specialty cheeses bring new life to old plant

John Oncken
Special to the Capital Times  —  10/18/2007 10:57 am

The old cheese factory fronting U.S. 18 on the edge of Montfort some 15 miles west of Dodgeville is easy to miss. That's been especially true since the sign marking the Wisconsin Farmers Union Specialty Cheese Company was taken down this summer after highway officials found it 16 inches too close to the right of way during a road reconstruction project.

Either way, the nondescript building still has a "Montfort Dairy" name attached to the building front and cheese lovers across the country manage to find this cheese factory that has won World and U.S. Championships during its brief 4 1/2 years of existence.

Competition for the consumer taste buds and dollars is fierce. Available cheese varieties number in the many hundreds and in this day of global marketing, a small Wisconsin cheese factory competes against not only long established U.S. cheeses but cheese from across the world.

And the Wisconsin Farmers Union Specialty Cheese Company is not owned by a storied family. In fact, it is owned by thousands of Midwest farmers who are members of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, a general farm organization headquartered in Chippewa Falls, which dates back to 1930.

Talk of value-added products was an ongoing subject at WFU board meetings in the late 1990s, recalls Sue Beitlich, president. While she was not president at the time, Beitlich tells of early efforts to sell English type cheeses via mail and the Internet.

"We did not want to get in to the brick and mortar business," she says. "But the cheese idea sort of evolved and we began making cheese by 2003."

And the cheese they made was very good.

After a brief three years their Montforte Gorgonzola Cheese received the World's Best Gorgonzola Cheese award at the 2006 World Championship Cheese Contest and first place at the 2007 American Cheese Society competition. Their Montforte Blue Cheese was judged the Best Blue Cheese at the 2006 American Cheese Society competition.

Not bad for beginners, but then the little cheese factory at Montfort is not exactly populated by beginners.

CEO Doug Caruso of Middleton has been around the dairy and management world for many years.

He managed the Madison-based Farmers Union Milk Marketing Cooperative, now renamed Family Dairies USA. He also was with the Wisconsin Federation of Cooperatives; served as Sen. Herb Kohl's state director and was the state director of the USDA's Farm Service Agency during the Clinton presidential years.

"I first came aboard as a consultant in the spring of 2003," Caruso says. "The goal was to redesign the business that had gone through some severe financial challenges in its early years. In November I became the CEO."

Tim Pehl, plant manager, has been in the cheese business all his life. The Gratiot farm boy began as a laborer for Roy's Dairy in Monroe; moved to Avonmore Cheese, also in Monroe; then Saputo Cheese when it bought out Avonmore.

A key player in the success of Wisconsin Farmers Union Specialty Cheese is Doug Peterson, who owns Dairymasters LLC, a marketing, product development and quality support consulting business in Mazomanie.

Peterson has a long history in the cheese business. His father Harold was a cheesemaker and is known for originating the famed Co-Jack cheese. This combination of Colby and Monterey Jack cheese now appears under many formulas and names.

Peterson is a Master Cheesemaker in Colby and Monterey Jack cheeses, graduating in the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board's first class of Master Cheesemakers 10 years ago. He currently works with a half dozen clients.

"But this one is where the romance is," he says.

The decision to make blue veined cheeses had been made by the WFU board. That meant a good bit of research and practice on the part of Pehl and Peterson to come up with a quality product. Both will seek Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker status in coming months.

The Montfort facility had been vacant for some five years before the WFU bought it in 2001. It was gutted and remodeled and filled with new and used cheese processing equipment.

Caruso is proud of the 1,200 pounds of Gorgonzola and blue cheese made daily at the Montfort plant. "We have three cheese vats holding 10,000 pounds of milk each and we make 10 vats of cheese daily," he explains. "That's 12,000 pounds of blue-veined cheese each day and in four years we've made over 15 million pounds of cheese."

Most of the cheese is marketed by Winona Foods of Green Bay. It mostly ends up in salad dressings and in restaurants where it is crumbled and used on salads.

The smallest market segment is the retail business operated out of the retail store (608-943-6753) in the Montfort plant and via the Internet.

Penny Heisz runs the retail business. She spent 17 years at Lands' End in Dodgeville and on her family dairy farm.

"The Internet business is growing (www.wfucheese.com)," Heisz says. "I have restaurants in Washington and Oregon that purchase Gorgonzola and blue cheeses regularly and restaurants in North Carolina and California who buy cheese curds for deep frying."

Cheese curds? Heisz says she can regularly get the curds to customers in two days.

"They are not like fresh curds right out of the vat," she says. "But they are really good."

To make cheese, the 20-25 employees need milk -- about 100,000 pounds a day. Tankers arrive daily with that milk from Scenic Central Milk Cooperative based in Sauk City.

Wisconsin Farmers Union Specialty Cheese has done very well over its few years of existence and it's done it during a time when making cheese has faced serious challenges.

There is the competition from new dairy processing plants in the southwest U.S. and California where a number of cheese plants processing two to five million pounds of milk per day have been built and are expanding.

Caruso sees the little plant in Montfort as an example of success in making and marketing specialty cheese.

"We're not in the commodity business," he says. "That is so competitive and prices are dropping with the competition in the West."

But the blue-veined cheese coming out of Montfort is finding a growing market among the cheese eaters who love quality and taste.

It's a tough business, but so far, so good.

John Oncken is owner of Oncken Communications, a Madison-based agricultural information and consulting company. He can be reached at 222-0624; e-mail jfodairy@chorus.net

John Oncken
Special to the Capital Times  —  10/18/2007 10:57 am