Marieke Penterman’s cheesemaking journey started with a calf. 

After emigrating from the Netherlands to Thorp, Wisconsin, the place her then-husband had began a 350-cow dairy farm, Penterman was searching for a profession path in her new Midwestern residence. Throughout one sleepless night time, within the midst of remembering to ask Dutch associates planning a go to to deliver her a few of the gouda missed a lot, she heard a cow giving beginning. 

“Hastily the entire puzzle got here collectively,” she says. “I am lacking my Gouda, and I need to begin my enterprise.” Plus, as all of the hubbub she heard within the barn reminded her, she had entry to loads of milk. 

Embarking on her new profession, Penterman discovered that she would wish a cheesemaker license. The method, which might take as much as two years, is overseen by Wisconsin’s Division of Agriculture, Commerce and Client Safety. It contains, relying on the applicant’s expertise and chosen path, some variation of hands-on expertise and lessons that cowl subjects like meals security and pasteurization. And Wisconsin is the one state within the nation that requires its cheesemakers to earn one. 

“The cheesemaking license is about science, sanitation, and the integrity of America’s Dairyland,” says Abrielle Kane, a public relations specialist for Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin. “We would like high-quality milk, high-quality cheese, and we would like very excessive requirements.” 

Penterman took programs, apprenticed with a neighborhood cheesemaker, and returned to Holland to learn to make Dutch Gouda. Again in Wisconsin, she began Marieke Gouda, and simply 4 months after making her first batch, her Foenegreek Gouda received a gold medal within the U.S. Championship Cheese Contest.

“That basically put us on the map,” she says. Practically 20 years in, Marieke Gouda has received lots of of awards, together with, in 2013, one for the perfect cheese within the nation. On the heels of that win, Penterman’s gouda helped her develop into a everlasting resident within the U.S. The cheesemaker was the primary ever to be awarded a Inexperienced Card for “distinctive skill,” a standing often reserved for athletes, artists, actors, and scientists. 

Like Penterman, Anna Landmark earned her cheesemaker license by apprenticing, and by taking programs on subjects like meals security and the science of cheesemaking — a course of she discovered useful. 

“Milk is form of a residing organism, it’s all the time altering, based mostly on the seasons and the animals and what they’re consuming,” she says. “It was actually useful to have that form of data, which I wouldn’t have gotten simply doing an apprenticeship or working in a cheese plant.” Since incomes her license a decade in the past, she runs Landmark Creamery in Paoli, simply south of Madison, specializing in sheep’s milk cheeses. (She additionally makes butter inside a micro-dairy at Seven Acres, a restored cheese manufacturing unit that’s now a boutique lodge.)

Landmark praises the state’s small however mighty native cheese neighborhood, which incorporates a number of makers who she considers mentors. “I feel there’s a variety of camaraderie,” she says. These days, the cheesemaker is herself a mentor, teaching apprentices like Shannon Berry. 

Armed with a culinary background, Berry is studying nuanced classes about cheesemaking that might be troublesome to be taught in some other approach, like how the curds ought to odor and really feel at completely different factors of the method. She’s additionally studying that it takes ample bodily energy to make cheese. After a very strenuous day of blending salt into curd, Berry nursed an aching again whereas telling her sister, “I need to let that anytime you style cheese, simply know that there is a cheesemaker someplace that put every part that they had into that cheese.”

Past the licensing program’s sensible advantages, “it makes you fall extra in love with the entire idea of what sort of an artwork it’s to make cheese,” says Penterman. The Dutch-Wisconsinite is presently going by the Grasp Cheesemaker program — a next-level license that the Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin liken to getting a PhD in cheese. To earn one, it’s a must to develop into a licensed cheesemaker, make cheese for 10 years earlier than you possibly can even apply, after which spend one other three years going by this system. Wisconsin is the one state within the nation — and the one place exterior of Switzerland — the place you possibly can develop into a Grasp Cheesemaker.

Whereas the state is residence to greater than 1,200 licensed cheesemakers, there’s solely about 100 Grasp Cheesemakers. Solely two have been ladies, and the third, Sara Griesbach, was simply introduced in Could. Two years into this system herself, Pentermen expects to be the fourth feminine Grasp Cheesemaker in 2025.

Wisconsin is residence to greater than 600 sorts, types, and styles of cheese, which suggests close to infinite choices for constructing a top-tier cheese board. In accordance with the specialists, it ought to embody Landmark’s award-winning Anabasque, which Anna Landmark calls, “a bit funky” with robust nutty notes and a pleasant texture. Hill Valley Dairy Luna is one other should, a salty, crumbly cow’s milk studded with delicate crystals, as is micro-dairy St. Isidore’s clothbound cheddar, made utilizing milk from a herd of 10 Jersey cows in extraordinarily small batches by fourth-generation dairy farmer Inga Witscher.

One from Grasp Cheesemaker Chris Roelli must also be on the board, just like the original-recipe Dunbarton Blue that melds the flavors of an English cheddar with blue. And naturally, Marieke Gouda is a Dairyland cheese board should. The Reserve Gouda was made throughout COVID lockdowns. When the getting old room was full, they vacuum-packed the farm’s cheese, which slows down the getting old course of, leading to a supremely creamy cheese. 

“There’s not one other state that may construct such an outstanding cheese board with the completely different varieties that we’ve right here in Wisconsin,” says Pentermen. “There is no such thing as a different state that has such all kinds of top of the range and flavorful cheeses.”