A first-time competitor took top honors at the 2011 U.S. Championship Cheese Contest in Wisconsin with an Evalon, an aged goat's milk cheese.

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Katie Hedrich, 25, of LaClare Farms in Chilton, Wis., scored 99.06 out of 100 possible points Thursday in Green Bay, winning the best of show award over 1,600 other cheeses from makers in 30 states, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported Friday.

The second and third place cheeses were also from Wisconsin, with a 24-month aged Parmesan from Sartori Foods in Plymouth being named first runner-up and an aged Gouda from Holland's Family Cheese of Thorp receiving second runner-up honors.

"It's awesome," said Hedrich, who began making cheese in 2009 and was licensed as a cheese maker during the past winter. "It's unbelievable and such an honor. As a cheese maker you dream of the day you can put more and more of your milk to making your own cheese, but I never thought it would actually happen. Honestly, I'm completely speechless."

Hedrich said orders for the Evalon have already increased at her family's farm, which has been producing goat's milk for cheese making since 1996 and began creating its own cheese about four years ago.

"Yeah, I think we will be very diligently making a lot more cheese now," she said.