KIEL (NBC 26) — Winning three first-place awards at the U.S Champion Cheese Contest in Green Bay last month, Henning Cheese hopes to promote local dairy farms in Wisconsin.
- Henning Cheese sources all their dairy from 17 local family farms.
- The company was founded in 1914.
- Henning Cheese focuses on supporting the community and promoting local agriculture.
For a century, the products at Henning Cheese have been made by hand.
“We still produce cheese the way my grandfather, my great grandfather, produced cheese,” Rebekah Henschel, fourth generation co-owner, says.
Throughout the years, Henning Cheese has won multiple awards. Henschel says their aged cheddar won top 20 out of 3500 entries at the World Championship Cheese Contest.
They also won three first place awards at the U.S Champion Cheese Contest in Green Bay this year.
“You don’t make it in the top 20 just by massively producing cheese,” Henschel says. “We’re doing something pretty special here.”
Henschel says their quality comes from the dairy. Henning Cheese sources dairy from 17 locally owned family farms.
“We believe that bringing milk in from local family dairy farmers, first of all, gives us the freshest milk because we're not moving it long distances,” she says. “We really like to support the local community.”
Connie and Dale Birenbaum have owned a dairy farm in Manitowoc for almost 30 years. They sell their milk to Henning Cheese.
“They show appreciation for where they got their milk from– that, I think, is unique,” Dale says. “They do appreciate the work that we put into it.”
Connie also works at Henning Cheese and says the company shows the same appreciation to their employees.
“It has been a delight everyday,” she says. “They care totally about their employees here and on the other end, I get to see how much they care about farmers, and it’s a special, special thing.”
Henschel says they also sell their cheese in local markets, supporting the community as much as they can.
“We're purchasing our ingredients from people who live right down the road from us so what's an ecosystem here you know and then we sell to the local retailers,” she says.
Henning Cheese is rebranding their packaging, including more on the ingredients in the cheese.
“We pride ourselves on quality, and we wanted our logo and our label to mimic that,” Henschel says.
On Friday, Halei Heinzel, the 77th Alice in Dairyland, visited the factory. She says she hopes to promote the Wisconsin agriculture industry as a whole.
“I’m always excited to learn a little bit more,” she says. “My background is in the dairy industry, but more on the cow side of things. I love getting to see all the things we can do with all of that wonderful milk we produce in Wisconsin.”
You can find out more and learn where to buy Henning cheese on their website.
