April 18, 2025
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Photo courtesy of Nasonville Dairy

FLAVORFUL PORTFOLIO — Nasonville Dairy provides a variety of cheese types and flavors under its own brands or for private label, ranging from pizza cheeses to more than 20 flavored Monterey Jacks.

Photo courtesy of Nasonville Dairy

ROOM TO GROW — Nasonville Dairy currently is expanding its main plant, adding new packaging lines as well as adding capacity to its milk intake.

By Rena Archwamety

MARSHFIELD, Wis. — As Nasonville Dairy celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, the award-winning cheese business is looking to the future with a brand new expansion and plans to bring on a fourth generation of family ownership.

The original plant’s history goes back even further, as it was founded in 1885 and now is the oldest cheese plant in Witt County, Wisconsin. At that time, it was a seasonal operation — the cheesemaker worked in the woods during the winter and made cheese during the summer, and milk was delivered on horse-drawn wagons. It underwent a number of ownership changes through the first and second world wars, between private to cooperative.

In 1968, Arnold and Rena Mae Heiman were hired as managers of what was then the Lincoln Center Co-op, eventually purchasing the cheese factory and naming it Nasonville Dairy in 1985, and putting it back under private ownership.
“When our dad brought us there in the 60s, the co-op was taking in 7,500 pounds of milk a day. It was 75,000 pounds in the early 80s. Today it’s 1.8 million pounds, and this summer it will be over 2 million,” says Ken Heiman, CEO of Nasonville Dairy.

• Flavors and varieties

In its early days, the plant made a lot of Cheddar, from mammoth wheels to later 40-pound blocks. After the Heimans arrived, the company started to diversify to become more competitive against larger cheesemakers on a national scale.

Today, the main Nasonville Dairy plant sits almost exactly on the same site as the original 1885 building, though it has undergone extensive changes and expansions. The company also owns a smaller plant near
Abbotsford, Wisconsin, that uses more traditional, open-vat cheesemaking methods.

Nasonville Dairy still produces Cheddar as well as a wide variety of other cheeses for private label, industrial, foodservice and retail, from its 20-plus flavors of Monterey Jack to its in-demand pizza cheeses and Café Olympia Feta. The company’s Monterey Jack and Feta in Brine both won medals at this spring’s U.S. Championship Cheese Contest. One of its latest additions is Café Olympia Feta Spread.

“Feta Spread is one of our newest cheeses,” Heiman says. “When looking for something to put on top of a bagel, if a consumer wants a more zesty flavor, they’ll get that in Feta. It’s something different than just cream cheese.”

The company sells many of its other cheeses, including its numerous flavored varieties, under its Nasonville Dairy brand, and also provides existing and custom creations for private label customers.

“When you ask about cheeses that make us different, we have a lot of flavored cheeses. We’re pretty handy at coming up with new flavors,” Heiman says. “We’ve made Monterey Jack that may have beer, buffalo wing sauce, caraway, chipotle, cranberry, dill, garden vegetable, green olives, habanero or horseradish. We’ve added different types of peppers, maple syrup, onion, garlic pepperoni or spinach.”

Nasonville also carries an award-winning original, Blue Marble Jack Cheese, which offers a more intense, elevated flavor for burgers or recipes along with portion control, sliceability and easy handling for foodservice operators. In both foodservice and retail, Heiman says he’s seen consumers gravitate toward more flavorful options.

“We see consumers looking for more and more robust flavors, finding other ways of using them and putting them on different items,” he says.

• Exports and expansion

Over the past decade, Nasonville Dairy has been expanding its sales overseas as well as domestically. Its cheeses have been presented at international sales conferences such as SIAL in France and others in the Middle East. Currently its cheeses are exported into China, Japan, Canada and Saudi Arabia, and soon it will add Panama, Morocco and other countries.

“We believe very strongly that we will be competitive in any part of the world,” Heiman says. “Exports have been growing, and we continue to see success outside of the country that will continue to grow ... we think there are more opportunities in other parts of the world.”

As Nasonville Dairy continues to grow, it is expanding its main plant in Marshfield, Wisconsin, upgrading lines to add more packaging capability and allow for new product innovations, as well as expanding its milk receiving bays to increase capacity.

The company this month is breaking ground on its intake expansion, and the entire project is expected to be complete by early next year.

“Our milk receiving bays have been tied up virtually 24 hours a day, and our new milk intakes will allow for us to look into the future and do things we’re not capable of now,” Heiman says. “It gives us a better avenue for handling our regular milk, but also the capacity to handle organic and kosher.”

The new packaging lines are being delivered this month and next, Heiman adds, and these also will add new capabilities to Nasonville’s portfolio of cheeses.

“There will be different packagings that will be offered in crumbled Fetas and other cheeses. We’ll have a lot of different capabilities, whether chunks in brine, different cubes, crumbles and other things we do,” he says.

“And not only in Feta, but also in our Montereys, flavored cheeses or Parmesans, we will be able to do a number of different things.”

Heiman notes that the expanded capacity and capabilities will further help Nasonville’s mission in creating new products and providing its customers and consumers with what they need.

“The biggest thing on our part is to understand what the consumer is looking for, and consumers always are looking for more and more convenience. We will be able to supply that convenience,” he says. “We’re always looking to say, ‘What can we do?’ and create something new.”

• Expertise and family

Nasonville Dairy currently employs 17 licensed cheesemakers, including five Wisconsin Master Cheesemakers — Heiman, Kirk Hansen, Sarah Griesbach, Tom Torkelson and its newest Master Cheesemaker John Schmid, who graduated from the program this spring. Master Cheesemakers are required to have at least 10 years of licensed cheesemaking experience before entering the advanced three-year Masters program to earn certifications in up to two cheeses at a time. Brian Jackson, one of the most decorated Wisconsin Master Cheesemakers with 10 certifications, retired from Nasonville this past year.

“We encourage the Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker program from the viewpoint that someone always has to have something to shoot at,” Heiman says. “We encourage our cheesemakers, after they’ve been around awhile, if they are interested in the Masters program, to see if they qualify and are a good fit.”

Heiman, who has earned Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker certifications in Asiago, Cheddar, Feta and Monterey Jack, began his cheesemaking career as a teenager, taking classes when he was 15 from Mike Dean, who later would be instrumental in founding the Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker program. Heiman’s brothers Kim and Kelvin and sister Kathy, as well as some third-generation family members, are involved in the Nasonville Dairy business as well, with a fourth generation poised to continue the family’s legacy.

“When I was young, I knew I would get into cheesemaking. I got a degree in architecture, but then went back to the cheese world. It’s a family thing; you have to go off and get something you can make a living on outside of this. But if you come home, you’re always welcome,” Heiman says, noting that family members are involved in all aspects of the cheese and dairy business.

“They may be at the plant, in transportation or production. They could be involved in farming or the milk bottling plant,” he says. “Then we have the next generation in college, whose goal is to complete a degree in food science and take grandpa’s place. That would be the fourth generation.”

Beyond the immediate family, Nasonville Dairy sources its milk from 200 local farmers, all within about a 70-mile radius of the plant, and many of these suppliers also have been partnering with the company for generations.

“Some were here in the 60s, and some of those farms still were providing to the plant in generations beyond that,” Heiman says. “Some of the farms have been here as long as I’ve lived in this part of the country.”

CMN