Episode 25
Vermont Cheese is More Than Cheddar
When you think Vermont cheese, cheddar probably isn’t far behind. And fair enough—Vermont makes some damn good cheddar. But that’s only the beginning.
Ahead of the Vermont Cheese Makers Festival, we’re going beyond the names and cheeses everyone already knows to meet three smaller Vermont cheesemakers doing things completely their own way.
But first, we’re going back to my first Vermont Cheese Makers Festival in 2023—a weekend that included Jasper Hill’s absolutely ridiculous 20th anniversary party, a never-ending Harbison board, a maple creemee truck, cheese science, Shelburne Farms and one of the muddiest festival parking situations imaginable. I went to Vermont loving cheese but still feeling very much like the new girl in the industry. I came home with entirely too much cheese (the correct amount) and the feeling that maybe I actually belonged there.
Three years later, I’m heading back into Vermont cheese with a very different perspective.
At Fat Sheep Farm, Suzy Kaplan is making small-batch sheep’s milk cheese using natural starter cultures made from the farm’s own milk. The warm milk can go straight from the sheep into the vat, and the resulting cheese isn’t always exactly the same—which might actually be part of the point. The farm changes, the milk changes, the seasons change and the cheese gets to reflect it.
At Barn First Creamery, Rebecca Velazquez is making a pretty compelling argument against the phrase “I don’t like goat cheese.” Her goal is to make enough different styles of cheese that you could build an entire cheeseboard from their goat milk alone, including bloomy rinds, washed rinds and Valdez Blue, a raw goat’s milk blue she describes as bright, clean, tangy and—my favorite—“a happy blue.”
And at Good Hands Creamery, Liz Bleakley is making tiny batches of raw milk cheese basically by herself, working with a 52-gallon vat and exceptional Vermont Jersey cow’s milk. Her cheeses include Solidago, washed with a Vermont saffron brine; Echo, a cider-washed Alpine-style cheese; and Eugene, washed with stout. She even presses her wheels using buckets filled with water.
We’re talking natural cheesemaking, raw milk, farmstead vs. artisanal cheese, goat cheese for people who think they hate goat cheese, weird-but-brilliant pairings like kimchi grilled cheese—and the reality that even very good cheesemakers occasionally make a cheese that wakes up and chooses violence.
Most importantly, we’re talking about why the Vermont Cheese Makers Festival is the perfect place to keep walking past the names you recognize, taste something you’ve never heard of and actually talk to the person behind the cheese.
Because the person handing you that sample may very well be the person who milked the animal, stirred the curd, washed the rind, flipped that wheel for months—and laid awake one night wondering why one batch was weird.
Vermont cheese is more than cheddar. Go meet the people proving it.
