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Artisan Cheese
Researched and Written by Janine Weins
(Posted 10/6/06)

According to the 1911 dictionary I inherited from my grandfather, cheese is "The consolidated curd of milk, used as an article of food... The curd is separated from the milk by the use of some coagulating agent, usually rennet... The characteristic texture and flavor of a cheese are developed during the ripening, a fermentation process... the agents in this process may be enzymes already in the curd... bacteria, or in cheeses like Roquefort, mold."

Cheese is usually made from milk that curdles easily such as the milk from cows, goats, sheep, and buffalo. With some difficulty, cheese can be made from milk that does not curdle easily, such as milk from a camel.

The first cheese may have been made by an Arabian who traveled across the dessert with milk in a sheep's stomach he was using as a pouch. During his travels the heat of the dessert and the rennet in the sheep's stomach caused the milk to separate into curd and whey.

In 1620, European settlers brought cheesemaking to the Plymouth Plantation. In 1845, Swiss immigrants to Wisconsin started manufacturing cheese for commercial sale.

In 1880, cheese production in the United States was 216 million pounds, much of which was produced on 4,000 small farms. By the turn of the century, few farms were producing cheese; most cheese was being made in cheese factories.

In part because of health benefits, cheese consumption in the United States nearly tripled between 1970 and 2003, from 11 pounds per person to 31 pounds. A third of the milk produced in the United States is used to produce cheese.

Cheese is a high-quality protein, an excellent source of calcium, contains important vitamins such as B-12, and contains minerals such as phosphorus and zinc.

As the consumption of cheese has grown, the interest in handmade artisan cheeses has grown. Vermont has more than two dozen artisan cheesemakers, many of whom produce award-winning cheeses. In 2006, Cabot Clothbound Cheddar won the American Cheese Society Best of Show. In 2004 and again in 2006, Thistle Farm Cheese won 1st place at the American Cheese Society. Vermont's award-winning artisan cheesemakers includes Lazy Lady Farm which makes goat cheese, Blythedale Farm which some say makes the best Camembert in the country, Shelburne Farms which uses milk from their herd of purebred Brown Swiss to make exceptional cheddar cheeses, and Grafton Village Cheese which is made from the milk of Jersey cows. The nation's first comprehensive center devoted to artisan cheese is the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese located at the University of Vermont.

Artisan cheeses are handmade by skilled cheesemakers who are involved with every step of the process. Nowhere is this more true than at Thistle Hill Farm. Thistle Hill Farm is an organic farm in North Pomfret, Vermont, owned by John and Janine Putnam. The farm makes one cheese, Tarentaise Alpine Cheese. The cheese is a true farmstead cheese—every step of the process takes place on the farm and neither milk nor feed are brought onto the farm.

The milk for Thistle Hill Farm's cheese comes from their own grass-fed Jersey cows. The curd is prepared in a copper vat that was shipped to Vermont from Switzerland. The rennet is made on the farm from the whey of previous cheesemakings. The curds are removed from the copper vat by hand using cheese cloth to assure that the curds are not damaged.

Wheels of cheese, approximately 14 inches in diameter and 4 inches high, are aged for 4 months or longer. During aging, the cheese is turned and scrubbed twice a week.

If you would like to learn more about Thistle Hill Cheese visit their website at http://www.thistlehillfarm.com. If you would like to learn about other local artisan cheeses, visit the Vermont Cheese Council at http://www.vtcheese.com/ or Great Cheeses of New England at http://www.newenglandcheese.com/.