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For $4, hungry dairy enthusiasts who attended the recent World Dairy Expo could enjoy a grilled cheese bite at the “cheese stand” with a choice of American, Swiss or the daily “specialty cheese.” 

With options such as Muenster, smoked Gouda and dill havarti, one in four customers tried the specialty cheese, estimated Grace Mansell, a biological systems engineering student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and manager of the stand operated by the Badger Dairy Club and the Collegiate Farm Bureau.

“It’s a really great, new and exciting thing that people are getting into (specialty cheese). It’s not necessarily just your classic flavors anymore,” Mansell said. “Everybody likes a good classic American, but it’s kind of fun to have something different every day for people to try.”

Last year, over a quarter (28%) of the cheese produced in Wisconsin was considered specialty cheese, according to the USDA. Longer-term data show a growing interest among cheesemakers in making more specialty cheeses each year.

Specialty cheese generally refers to premium cheeses that stand out for their unique styles, flavors or craftsmanship, according to Chris Kuske Riese, senior vice president of channel marketing for Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin. There’s no single definition for the category, so they can be cheese curds with Cajun spices, cheddar cheese with smoked flavor, or a wide variety of Hispanic cheeses.

“From a marketing perspective, specialty cheese plays an important role in consumer perception,” Riese wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch. “These products help elevate Wisconsin Cheese’s reputation for quality and innovation, while complementing the broader category of cheeses consumers enjoy every day.”

Wisconsin cheesemakers produced over 1 billion pounds of specialty cheese in 2024. That marked a twelvefold increase since the USDA started collecting data in 1993.

USDA reported 93 of Wisconsin’s 116 cheese plants manufactured at least one type of specialty cheese last year. The number has more than doubled within three decades. However, the number of specialty cheesemakers remained mostly stable since 2009, meaning cheese plants are increasing specialty cheese production each year.

Luke Buholzer, vice president of sales for the Klondike Cheese Company, said the company produced about 38 million pounds of cheese last year, almost doubling the production from a decade ago. All of his company’s products are considered specialty cheeses. 

Wisconsin cheesemakers first showed their interest in specialty cheese in the early 1980s. 

“Cheesemakers at smaller plants started to become more flexible, entrepreneurial and willing to take on some risk. They got fed up with the low cheese prices and trying to compete with commodity plants and recognized they needed to do something different,” John Lucey, director of the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote in a guest column for Cheese Market News.

“The whole reason we went into specialty cheeses is because they do have better (profit) margins, so we can keep the business afloat,” Buholzer said. Cheesemakers needed larger production volumes to make commodity cheeses profitable, yet drastically increasing production volume was not ideal for smaller cheese manufacturers.

Klondike made commodity cheeses like cheddar and Colby during that time. The company introduced Muenster cheese in the early 1980s as its first specialty product. The company gradually introduced more specialty cheese products throughout the decade, including feta in 1988 and dill havarti in the early 2000s. The company simultaneously phased out its commodity cheese production.

Among all the specialty cheese products from Wisconsin, Hispanic cheese eclipses all, with over 150 million pounds being produced last year. Feta followed closely in second place. Buholzer said the popularity of this Greek-style cheese was largely boosted by a baked feta pasta recipe that went viral on TikTok in 2021. The recipe required 8 ounces of feta cheese. 

“Within a week, I saw sales on that particular item go up over 288%,” Buholzer said.

Parmesan wheels are also gaining popularity. Specialty cheddar, havarti and Asiago are also some of the more commonly produced specialty cheeses in Wisconsin. 

“Several market reports suggest growth in the gourmet food/premium foods space,” Riese wrote. “Wisconsin has a distinct advantage in this space because of its long tradition of cheesemaking, the only Master Cheesemaker program outside of Switzerland, and the ability to innovate while still producing at scale.”

DataWatch: Wisconsin-made cheese is special. Here are the numbers to prove it. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.