Nothing but Gouda times in America’s Dairyland

Rachel Kroeger

Staff

July 21, 2025

THORP – From her family’s farm in the Netherlands to her own in rural Wisconsin, Marieke Penterman said her passion for dairy has always been rooted in one of its most delectable forms – Gouda cheese.

However, she said it’s not the cheese that brought her and her business partner, Rolf, to America’s Dairyland.

“Cows brought us to Wisconsin,” she said.

Penterman said she and Rolf both grew up on 60-cow dairy farms in Holland prior to their meeting in Canada – where she said he and his brother were exploring different locations for a potential business venture.

“Rolf also had a brother that wanted to dairy farm,” she said. “So, they went to Canada, and they went to different parts of the world [looking for a place to farm].”

When she met Rolf in Canada – “a long, long time ago” – Penterman said she was working on a dairy farm.

“I told them if they ever found their place that I was going to come and help them out…,” she said. “They found this beautiful place in Wisconsin where they started to farm.”

Per mariekegouda.com, after joining Rolf and his brother on their 350-cow dairy farm in Thorp, Penterman found herself missing a distinctive aspect of her time growing up in the Netherlands.

“If you ask immigrants, ‘what do you miss from home?’ – for me, that definitely was Gouda cheese,” she said. “I couldn’t find really good Gouda here in the United States.”

Relying on her family and friends back home, Penterman said she’d often request they bring her cheese to fill her Gouda cravings.

“Family and friends [would] always [ask], ‘Hey, we’re coming to visit you, what would you like?’ And I’d say, ‘Gouda!’” she said. “But due to the restrictions by customs… my Gouda inventory [was] less and less. So, I had a problem.”

However, Penterman said that problem presented her with an opportunity, and it wasn’t long before she said inspiration struck to start her own Gouda business.

“I [knew I] wanted to start my own business before I turned 30,” she said. “One night, I was tossing and turning, and I heard a cow calfing, and I’m like, ‘that’s it… I’m missing the Gouda from the Netherlands, and we have the good Wisconsin milk.’ So, I woke up Rolf and said, ‘I know what we’re going to do. We’re going to make Gouda.’”

Today, Penterman said they aren’t making any old Gouda, but state- and national-award-winning Gouda at her farm and creamery located at 200 West Liberty Drive in Thorp.

From feed to table

Starting her business in America’s Dairyland, Penterman said, required her to go back to school and obtain her cheesemaker’s license.

“Wisconsin, I think, is one or maybe two of the only states on the planet that require a cheesemaker’s license,” she said. “So, I went back to school, got the basic cheesemaker license and then had to go back to the Netherlands, because I still did not know how to make Gouda.”

Working alongside two individual dairy farmers – one with 10 cows and the other with 200 – Penterman said she spent roughly 10 days learning their tricks of the trade before coming back to the states and developing her own recipe.

“I tried both [of their] recipes and then created my own,” she said.

Though she used the two farmers’ recipes as a starting point for hers, Penterman said the possibilities to customize her own unique flavor and style were still endless, given the Gouda-making process’s subjectivity.

“[Things like] the temperature, the amount of water [you use] and how long you wash it make it different from Gouda to Gouda, and then the aging process [and] the aging conditions [affect it as well],” she said. “Then on top of it, everybody has different lands where the crops [to feed the cows] come from, and then [different] breeds of cow… have different fat and protein [levels, as well as] different DNA.”

Starting off by purchasing a “closed herd – meaning [it only had cows original to the] herd” – Penterman said put herself and her business in a good position to control the quality of the cheese from feed to table.

“We were very fortunate we were able to buy that closed herd,” she said. “[It’s] a mixed herd – so half of the herd is Holstein, a quarter is Brown Swiss and then another quarter is a mixture of different things.”

Having complete control of what the cows eat and where they live, Penterman said, results in the herd producing quality and consistent raw milk for her and her team to work with.

“Because we have our own milk, we can [use] the raw milk, [and] we also take the milk as it is, because we feed our cows very consistently,” she said. “The milk is very consistent, so we don’t have to standardize – meaning [we don’t have to] correct the milk to the specifications that we want or need.”

For that reason, taking good care of her herd, Penterman said, is of udder-most importance.

“Our barn is all about the comfort of the cow,” she said. “I always say we have a cow spa, or the cows are roaming around in a spa, and our nutritionist comes every week [to go] through the feed and make sure it’s consistent and steady and it has all pure ingredients.”

First time’s the charm

The ability to customize Gouda cheese doesn’t end with the recipe process, Penterman said, as she can add different flavors and ingredients to vary the taste and consistency of her products.

“We want to be good at one thing, and it’s Gouda,” she said. “We have the fenugreek and presso basil and the summerfield [Goudas], and then we also have a phenomenal smoked Gouda that gets naturally smoked,” she said. “The main key is we get [the milk] from our own cows [and] we make it into cheese within six hours [because] the distance from the farm to the creamery is only 137 feet.”

Marieke Gouda’s products, Penterman said, are also free of any additives.

“It’s all pure and natural,” she said. “We don’t add any additives to it – we don’t even put any coloring to it – [and] all our supplies, like our herbs and stuff, are very natural.”

Because they are making Gouda from raw, unpasteurized milk, Penterman said there are extra steps she and her team must take in order for it to be consumer ready – resulting in a longer processing period.

“Because we do [make] a raw milk cheese, it [needs to age for] about 60 days, [the] minimum requirement [by] law,” she said “Then, depending on the Gouda – young or a little bit more age – you want a little bit more complexity to your to your flavor, because as it ages, it will lose moisture, and then the flavor gets a little bit more intense.”

Crafting her first batch of Gouda in November 2006, Penterman said she credits happenstance and intuition for the success of her recipe.

“I’m more of a lucky cheesemaker – I like the curds to talk with me – so it’s like a musician who does not read the notes, but feels the music,” she said. “[For instance], we don’t add salt in by hand – we let the cheese soak up its own salt, and for the salt to distribute through the wheels, it takes a couple of weeks. So, it took a little bit [to get that first batch, but] when we finally decided [what] batch we wanted to open… we tried it, and it was really good.”

And, almost as a testament to how good it was, Penterman said her flagship Gouda won the U.S. Champion Cheese Contest in 2007, very soon after its launch.

“We started sending it into competitions and won right away,” she said.

Now, as she approaches two decades in business, Penterman said she is both proud that her cheese has been honored with numerous accolades and that her business has become a resource for those interested in learning more about Gouda and dairy farming.

“I think people, if they ever want to, it’s very important to educate themselves, and I want people to know that our location welcomes people to come and [visit],” she said. “We’re open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week, and people, if they want to see the cows or educate themselves about Marieke Gouda, well, the flagship is here in Thorp.”

For more information on Marieke Gouda’s products, awards and education opportunities, visit its website or social media pages.