After a week of cheese detox (well, more or less), I’m back with a few more curd developments from the summer Fancy Food Show in DC. Up next, the new and newly-rebranded cheeses from Vermont’s Grafton Village Cheese.
There’s been a lot of chatter in the cheese world in the past year or so as America’s artisanal cheesemakers, after experiencing rapid growth in numbers in the ’90s/’00s, now look for ways to sustainably expand to meet the ever-increasing demand for their cheese. Some have benefited from outside investment that, in some cases, even comes from outside the US. It’s a tricky subject for a movement whose roots were aligned with the locavore craze. Many small cheesemakers got their start selling at their local farmers markets. As they grew to support retail distribution, their products move further and further from the home community — but still support jobs and dairy farms back at home. With the growing “slow money” trend, more cheesemakers seem to be benefiting from investments that can help them expand their operations or simply free up time to create new cheeses &/or invest more in marketing. We may have a soft spot for the true farmstead operations, but we’re not selfish — if a great cheese can be sustainably produced in larger quantities, why not share the love?
Vermont’s Grafton Village Cheese Company has recently made a sizable investment to both ends. Grafton Village has been making cheese in the small town of Grafton since 1892, but the company is now part of the nonprofit Windham Foundation (though Grafton of course is a for-profit operation), whose mission is to preserve and promote rural communities. New investments in their cheesemaking facilities include four new cheese caves, which will enable them to age all their cheeses right there in Grafton. (In the past, Grafton’s cave-aged clothbound cheddar had been shipped upstate and to Minnesota for aging.) While their growth is limited by the amount of milk they can buy, they are rebranding their aged cheddars with new labels that highlight their raw milk status and selling them under the “Grafton Tavern Select” label. Getting the chance to taste the one, two, three and four-year cheddars in succession was a nice treat.
Cheesemaker Dane Huebner introduces Truffled Bismark
At the Fancy Food Show, cheesemaker Dane Huebner (above) was particularly proud of the new mixed milk cheeses, and enthusiastically shared his efforts to bring sheeps milk cheese back to popularity in Vermont. (While there are sheep in Vermont, all their milk production is currently spoken for by other cheesemakers. Huebner is bringing his from a small supplier just across the border in New York.) The three new cheeses are the Dutch-inspired Leyden, with warm cumin flavor, and the sheeps-milk Bismark and Truffled Bismark. Each was smooth and flavorful, but the truffled really stole the show — earthy and rich with the pleasant mouth feel of a well-made sheeps-milk cheese. The Bismark is named after a legendary Vermont ram, and with the quality craftmanship of expert cheesemaker Huebner (a licensed Wisconsin cheesemaker), the cheese is sure to become yet another Vermont treasure. The cheeses debuted at the show were the first aged in their caves; look for them at fine cheese shops across the country this fall.
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