Local Cheesemaker Earns Master Cheesemaker Title

Monday, January 27th, 2025 -- 10:01 AM

(Ali Claudio, WEAU) The state of Wisconsin is known for offering many products nationwide like beer or good old fashioned cheese.

According to Ali Claudio with WEAU, one cheesemaker in Thorp, Marieke Penterman has officially mastered her craft. Meeting with Penterman Friday morning, she said that just last month she was announced a master cheesemaker in Wisconsin and out of 69 master cheesemakers, she’s now the fourth woman to achieve that license.

Marieke Penterman is the owner, founder and cheesemaker of Marieke Gouda. “Growing up on a dairy farm, I wanted to continue dairy farm, where else can you go, Wisconsin right?” Penterman said. Growing up in a small town in the Netherlands, was where chasing the dream of dairy farming all began.

“That fits about five times in the state of Wisconsin. It was always the females on our farm ‚on my side where my mother, my great mother like it was always the females that were milking the cows.” she said. However dairy farming took a gouda turn just 18 years ago. “One night I was tossing and turning and thinking like what could I start doing?” she said.

Adding that she was thinking about the cheese she loved from back home, she gave her parents a call to “bring me some really good gouda, I couldn’t get used to the gouda over here. When we had this idea to start making gouda, we only had one problem, we never made cheese.” she said.

Another thing she added to the conversation, “Taste more gouda, because I think everybody could use a little bit more gouda in their life.” So to get started in the cheesemaking business, Penterman got licensed and officially launched a new family company.

Afterwards, she was able to apply for the master title. “They approved me, never thought I’d be happy to go back to school for three years, but I was. And here we are, so I became the fourth female.” Penterman said.

She says she prolonged getting the master title, because “I’m not a scientific cheesemaker, I’m more like a lucky cheesemaker. I like to feel the curd, and now it’s like a musician that plays music without reading the notes. Now I had to learn some of the notes.” she said.

Whether you’re learning notes or the ropes of the family business, Marieke Penterman says a huge thank you to her team. “Because you can have a dream right, you can have an idea.

But if you don’t have wonderful, great people around you to actually see it through, it just stays a dream.” she said. Marieke Gouda cheese can be found nationwide in a variety of grocery stores, including the House of Gouda in Eau Claire.

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