APPLETON, Wis. — When one thinks of flavored cheese, the first thing that comes to mind might be a Pepper Jack or a Horseradish Cheddar. But as anyone who loves cheese knows, today many varieties come filled chock full of added flavors, with new ingredients being tried all of the time. White Clover Dairy, Appleton, Wis., recently has joined in on the trend as well, introducing four new special flavors to Gouda.

While Gouda has an upscale image and might not be the first cheese one would think to add flavors to, Paul Burmeister, national sales manager, White Clover, says the response has been phenomenal.

“Gouda is very mild and lends itself well to different flavors,” he says.

“It’s a little bit more high-end,” he adds. “We wanted to do something that would differentiate us from the competition. We want to create a treasure-hunt atmosphere for retailers and consumers.”

The new cheeses, officially launched in January, are Chili Lime Gouda, Chipotle Gouda, Pesto Gouda and Smoked Gouda with Cracked Black Peppercorns. The company’s regular Smoked Gouda, as well as the Gouda flavored with peppercorns, is a natural hickory-smoked Gouda, Burmeister says.

White Clover Dairy has been in business since 1897 when a small group of farmers established the dairy as a way to market their milk. Today, White Clover receives international acclaim for its production of Gouda and Edam, both of which it has been producing since the 1920s. The company has received numerous awards, including first place in the Edam and Gouda category in the 2002 World Championship Cheese Contest and first place in the category in this year’s U.S. Championship Cheese Contest.

While high-quality cheeses have been the hallmark of White Clover Dairy, new product introductions haven’t. But the company’s management decided to make the foray into the new flavors because of the changing market in which they find themselves.

“For us to grow our business, we have to have new items,” Burmeister says. “They’re the lifeblood of our industry.

“We have to be innovative and at the same time fit with our core competencies,” he adds.

The company certainly has the resources to innovate, Burmeister proudly notes. The cheeses have been developed over the last 24 months at the cheese plant by Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker Duane Petersen, who received his certification in Edam and Gouda, and longtime cheesemaker Matt Dempewolf. The company’s chief operating officer and vice president of operations, René Weber, also is a Swiss Federal Master Cheesemaker.

“It would be foolish not to tap into our capable people’s abilities. We have a lot of second- and third-generation employees,” Burmeister says.

White Clover has gone about the new product introductions carefully. The company has extensively test marketed the flavors at food and wine shows across the country, utilizing the services of the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, which works with cheesemakers to get them and their cheeses to food and wine shows.

“You can spend a lot of money doing marketing research,” Burmeister says. “One of the most efficient ways we’ve found is to work with the marketing board.”

Burmeister says attending the shows and getting direct feedback from consumers has been both fun and helpful.

“It pumps you up and reaffirms what you’ve been thinking,” he says, noting that it’s also gratifying when people want to buy a test market cheese on the spot. In addition, it has been helpful to learn which cheeses appeal to what genders; women, for example, are partial to the pesto flavor.

Of course, it isn’t always good news. While food and wine shows are fun-filled, gastronomically-pleasing events for adults, the foodies that tend to come to them also usually aren’t afraid to say what they don’t like.

“They’ll tell you if it’s too bland or too strong,” Burmeister says.

In fact, White Clover started with 20-some different flavor combinations before settling on the final four. One that didn’t do particularly well and didn’t make the final cut was a Focaccia Gouda.

“People would say they thought it was too salty,” he says.

The company also has learned about names that appeal to consumers. While focaccia as part of the cheese name didn’t set consumers on fire, Chili Lime has proved to be intriguing to consumers, Burmeister says.

White Clover was going to launch the cheeses this past fall, but first had to balance what all cheesemakers must when introducing a new product — the demand for the cheese and the availability of it. By January, the company believed it had enough customer expectations — and enough cheese — to officially launch the flavors.

“This was the first time White Clover had done something like this in a long time, and we had to do it right,” Burmeister says.

The flavored Goudas are available in 5- and 10-pound wheels, 5-pound loaves, 40-pound blocks and random and exact weight deli cuts. While historically the company has been perhaps best known as a private label cheese producer, the new Goudas are being marketed under the company’s White Clover and Holland Farm labels and the company has no plans at this time to offer them as private label. The most utilized brand likely will be Holland Farm — a play on the company’s plant being known as the Hollandtown plant and the fact that Gouda is often thought of as a cheese imported from Holland.

“We want to be supportive of our brokers,” Burmeister says of the decision to not make the new cheese private label. “We want to say, ‘This is yours and yours alone.’ The brokers are pretty pumped up.”

The new cheeses should prove to be a marketing tool, Burmeister says, noting that he believes the flavored varieties will lead customers to buy the original Gouda as well.

All signs so far point to the new cheeses being a hit — one restaurant chain even already has added the Smoked Gouda with Cracked Black Peppercorns to its menu without conducting any market studies, Burmeister says.

The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board also has helped White Clover get its cheeses introduced to chefs through its Chef Ambassador programs, and recently chefs made ravioli with the pesto flavor and pizza with the peppercorn flavor. Using the flavored Goudas allows chefs to set their creations apart without extra effort, Burmeister says.

There are a couple more new cheeses in the pipeline, Burmeister says, noting that the company will be focusing on value-added products in the future. In addition to Edam and Gouda, the company produces Havarti and is the domestic supplier of Havarti for Arla Foods. It also makes Cheddar and Monterey Jack, though Burmeister doesn’t expect that it will be competing in that arena long-term except possibly in flavored cheeses. In addition, the company makes a number of reduced-fat cheeses. The cheeses with 1/3-reduced fat are exceptionally good and stand up well against their full-fat counterparts, Burmeister says.

Overall, Burmeister believes the company is well-positioned for the future. Its medium size — the company produces about 22 million pounds of cheese annually — gives it the flexibility to try new things but at the same time the scale to produce large enough quantities to meet customer demands.

“Our size is an asset,” Burmeister says. CMN