Grafton Village Cheesemaking Company

by
Liz Thorpe

Talk about classic, traditional, historical American white cheddar, and you’ve gotta talk about Grafton. It’s best for me to openly admit my biases right now: the story of Grafton is one of countless stories that illustrate why Vermont is such a bad-ass, progressive state. People ask me all them time why Vermont is turning out so many excellent, and varied, cheeses, and I just can’t say any more specifically than, “Because it’s Vermont. They’re just…cooler there.” And please note, when people are inquiring about Vermont cheeses they’re talking about teeny little farms, couples making cheese in the backyard, certainly they’re not talking about boring old cheddar factories like Grafton, or even, gasp! Cabot. The stuff my mom buys in the North Haven Stop & Shop. They’re not talking about cheddar factories, but in this case, I am, because the story of this factory is still proof of why Vermonters are so neat, or more accurately put, why Vermont seems to lure people in, and back, across decades from childhood to adulthood. Vermont gets under people’s skin, and they come back, and they want to nurture and support this place that changed their life at one point or another.

So the story of Grafton cheese begins in 1892 and– this is great– the original cheesemaking was done on the first floor of an old frame house. On the second floor was…a dance hall. They’d hold box socials, where the local women would each make a boxed lunch that would be auctioned off to an audience of local men. The highest bidder got the lunch, and the babe, and then, presumably, everybody danced, while the cheese lay down below. At that time the Grafton Village Cheese Cooperative (cooperative meaning farmer-owned) was a place where local dairy farmers could bring their surplus milk, have it made into cheese, and returned to them for personal consumption. All this socializing, eating, dancing and general merriment ended when the frame house burned down in 1912 and cheesemaking ceased until the 1960s.

It took a rich, retired banker from New Jersey to bring Grafton (both the cheese and the town) back from the dead. Having summered in the area, he wanted to preserve the town of Grafton Village, and formed the Wyndham Foundation, which is still Vermont’s largest private foundation. The idea was to offer small investments to businesses that would preserve the local architecture, stimulate business and keep the area alive. The Foundation started strong in 1963 and in 1965 had two for-profit subsidiaries: the latter was the Grafton Village Cheesemaking Company. The thought was: cheese needs to be made by hand, and that need would keep hands in the area. Milk purchased from local dairies kept farms in the area. Employed folks pulling a salary kept money circulating in the local economy, and so, on the blocks of a small local cheese factory, a whole region could be sustained. And it worked.

Grafton made a few cheese choices in 1965 that remain to this day:
1. To use raw milk

2. To use Jersey cow milk
3. To age the cheddar for at least one year.
In fact, they now make cheese every single day of the week, but are limited to only two batches of cheese a day. The cheesemaking cycle takes nine hours (nearly twice that of other producers I’ve met), and slower, more gradual acidification tends to yield balanced, even flavor. Add to this the fact that milk arrives fresh each day at 3PM, and half of each 50,000 pound-load was in the cow that morning. It’s an incredibly immediate process for a producer of this size.

That brings me to my tasting notes. I’m sitting here with a slab of Goot Essa alongside of a slab of Grafton Cheddar. The Grafton is a slightly deeper yellow, more straw-colored than chicken stock, and looks smoother, moister, and so I would guess, younger (and it is, by a year). But the obvious difference is that the Grafton is covered is a thin, watery, glistening sheen. It’s fat. The cheese is sweating fat. Okay: that’s Jersey milk. It’s 1-2% higher in fat content than John Esh’s Holsteins (the black and white cows most people recognize). Then there’s the smell. Goot Essa’s is minimal: a bit like a bowl of warm mac and cheese topped with buttered, toasted bread crumbs. But the Grafton …I know the flavor is going to be spiky, sharp and intense, because the sweaty slab in front of me smells like pineapple. Pineapple and burnt toast. You know how pineapple manages to be incredibly sweet, but make your tongue feel hairy and prickly? Cheese that smells pineapply is the same way. The Grafton , despite its southern Vermont terroir, has the tropical whiff. Sure enough: a bite does none of the crumble of Goot Essa , but smears into a fatty, creamy whirl. Hello, Jerseys. There’s no tropical flavor, the lushness is all in the texture. Instead, it’s like well-made key lime pie: tart, tart, tart but milky and full. I’m finding I like softer, velvety flavors more and more with time. I like a little sweetness

A word about the Wyndham Foundation’s plan for cheese: Grafton still buys all its milk from Vermont farms (28 now), though they have to drive almost three hours to get enough raw material to produce their current 1.5 million pounds of cheese each year. Although 88 dairy farms closed in Vermont in 2006, most cows are absorbed into neighboring herds so milk production remains relatively consistent even as small dairy farms with 50 to150 cows go under. As Grafton prepares to open a second plant in Brattleboro, it seems that the initial vision has succeeded in creating jobs in the southern half of the state, though history indicates that working in the plant may be far more reliable and appealing then supplying its raw material.

Holland’s Family Farm

by
Liz Thorpe

OMG! This never happens. You never get a random box of samples from a cheesemaker you’ve never heard of (that no one else has much heard of, either), open the box, taste the cheese, and have every single one be excellent. And: to be made in a style that’s becoming increasingly better known and much beloved by American eaters. It’s a seriously rare occasion.

And it just happened to me a few weeks ago with the cheese from Holland’s Family Farm. You might guess there is a connection to Holland, and that connection might involve Gouda. It does! A variety of them, the aged versions of which rival our best imported specimens from the Netherlands. It was a fantastic delight. Turns out the wizard behind this cheese is a lovely and very young woman named Marieke Penterman (pronounced Mareeka). She and her husband Rolf both grew up on small (sixty cow) dairy farms in Holland. These days, Holland has six million people, plus another six million cows while Wisconsin is seven times bigger, and has five million people. Space in Holland is seriously tight, and land runs $30K an acre.

Wanting to farm, Marieke and Rolf came to the States, their brother-in-law having worked on a farm in Baldwin and found affordable land in rural Thorp. They started farming in 2002, had twins in 2003, and found cheese in 2006 as a way for Marieke to work on the farm but be close to the kids (there are three now!). She traveled to Holland twice, first to train with a woman milking ten cows, and later to study on a farm with two hundred. She made her first batch of cheese on 22 November 2006.

That’s astounding! It’s been less than two years, and the cheese is so good. Marieke makes cheese once a day, with warm morning milk straight from the cows. They have a herd of 710, and the rest of the milk goes to the milk cooperative. Only 8% of that single morning milking goes into cheese.

Now, I’ll be honest and admit that I wish their cows were pastured, at least some of the time. The non-milkers go out, but the rest of girls are in a free stall barn eating hay grown on the Penterman’s five hundred acres of land. Additional hay is trucked in from North Dakota and Madison, Wisconsin. Marieke mentioned that buying additional land and expanding the farm is preferable to buying hay, especially as feed and fuel skyrockets in cost. At any rate, the advantage they see to indoor, hay-fed cows is that the milk is more consistent for cheesemaking. And, I can’t knock the flavor.

All of the farm’s Gouda
is sold under the Marieke brand, and comes in thirteen(!) different flavors. What I have discovered are their aged varieties. As of June, Murray’s Cheese will be carrying their 9 month Gouda
, but we’ll have their more aged cheese as wheels become available. Holland’s Family Farm is making, without question, the best aged Gouda

I have had from the United States.