Cheeses of Vermont

The Green Mountain State is famous for its abundance of dairy farms, which have provided fresh, clean-tasting milk to New England for generations. Now, thanks to a new breed of farmers with sophisticated palates and mad-scientist zeal, some of these dairies are also producing delicious handcrafted cheese. 

These luscious creations include tangy chevres; buttery tomme-style wheels; oozing disks that recall Camembert; and pungent, creamy blues -- all inspired by European classics and tasting of the fertile earth from which they come (or at least of the grasses, herbs, and other browse that cows, goats, and sheep graze on before they are milked).

Tarentaise, for instance, an Alpine-style aged semihard cheese made at Thistle Hill Farm, gets its nutty flavor and golden color from the milk of Jersey cows that munch on the nutrient-rich grasses at John and Janine Putnam's 85-acre hillside property. John, a former lawyer, left the corporate world to make one cheese and to make it well. 

Other cheese-makers came to their craft after falling for Vermont itself, having spent summers there as children, returned after college, or just driven through, captivated by the sylvan setting. Some, like Hannah Sessions and Greg Bernhardt, of Blue Ledge Farm, are raising young families as they are raising herds -- an all-hands-on approach to farming at its most elemental. What they have in common is a passion for the state's agrarian culture. "We were really drawn to working with our hands on the landscape," Bernhardt says. "We didn't know that we were getting into such a fast-growing food sector."

Angela Miller didn't know that, either, when she started making cheese five years ago. "There's a real interest now in artisanal cheeses," says Miller, whose Consider Bardwell label is sold in specialty shops. A literary agent from New York City, Miller moved to Vermont part-time because she was "looking for a change." But she wasn't thinking about a second career that involved separating curd from whey: "I've had a lifelong passion for cheese, but I had no intention of making it." 

When she and her husband, Russell Glover, happened to find a rolling, 305-acre property that, in the mid-1800s, was the site of Vermont's first cheese-making cooperative, "a light bulb went on," she says. Miller took animal husbandry and cheese-making workshops, began raising goats, and produced her first cheese, a fresh, delicate-tasting patty called Mettowee, in 2004.

Willow Smart and Dave Phinney keep a flock of about 90 sheep for the cheese they produce on Willow Hill Farm. This isn't a common choice -- sheep give less milk than cows or goats and are more labor-intensive to care for. But Smart loves the small animals and their wonderfully rich milk. "The richer the milk, the more cheese you can make," she says. "The cheeses tend to be more buttery. They can be peppery or nutty -- there are just a myriad of flavors."

Like many emerging cheese-makers, Miller and Smart purchase some milk from other Vermont dairies, which allows them to produce more cheese without the cost and work of caring for more animals -- and to support and sustain the surrounding dairy community. (For Miller, who buys cow's milk, it also means that she can make new styles of cheese in the winter, when her goats get a break from milking so they can have their babies, before the cycle starts up again in spring.)

The brothers behind Jasper Hill Farm may have the most ambitious plan for ensuring that Vermont becomes a cheese-making mecca on a national, and perhaps even an international, scale. Mateo and Andy Kehler not only produce some of the finest cows' milk cheeses in this country, but they also buy, age, and sell cheeses made by dairies that don't have the resources to age and market their own products. They work with 13 other farms and say they have the capacity to handle 40. "We're interested in keeping these farms viable and helping them thrive," Mateo says.

From Martha Stewart Living, November 2009