“Cheese doesn’t lie,” says Tim Aiken, cheesemaker at Jasper Hill Farm, based in Greensboro.
“That’s one thing I love about cheesemaking,” Aiken says. “There is no small detail. Every little step shows itself throughout the life of cheese… So a lot of times you can see a cheese further down in its aging process and say, ‘Wow, this step was missed or this was mishandled here or done right here.’”
And the tricky bit with cheese is that you can make a change now that won’t be noticed until two, three, five months later, when it is no longer possible to fix it. It puts a premium on experience and knowledge of how to get it right.
“We have one way to get it right and a million ways to get it wrong,” Aiken says.
Jasper Hill got started in Greensboro in 1998, when Andy and Mateo Kehler, along with their wives Victoria and Angie, pooled their savings to buy a hillside farm, known in the town as “the old Jasper Hill Farm.”
At a time when many Vermont farmers were selling their herds, the Kehler brothers sought to create a new model for small-scale dairy farming – value-added agriculture. It’s focus was adding as much value to the farm’s raw material (milk) as possible before it left the farm.
They fixed up the barn on the property and built a creamery next door, as well as a cheese cave for cultivating natural rinds. Five years after starting the enterprise, in 2003, they sold their first cheeses.
A few years later, Cabot Cheese came calling, asking to use their aging facility for what became their highly successful Clothbound Cheddar. It signaled a need. If Vermont farmstead cheeses were going to take off, there had to be a local facility to store and age them – ripening is the most time consuming and labor-intensive part of the cheesemaking process. One thing led to another, and soon Jasper Hill had built a 22,000 square foot underground aging facility for the output of a half-dozen producers who, by pooling their efforts, could spend more time focusing on milk production and cheesemaking.
Today, 21 years after selling its first cheese, Jasper hill Farm is the largest independently owned artisan cheese maker in the United States. And its cheeses have repeatedly taken the top prizes at competitions all over the world.
Aiken, for his part, was not born into the cheese business. He actually had a concrete polishing and industrial flooring business when cheese came knocking. “My mother was the principal at Lakeview [Elementary School] and Mateo was on the school board,” Aiken recalls, “and they said they're looking for people at this company called Jasper Hill.” Aiken was interested. “I was sick of being on the road and said ‘Cheesemaking, that should be easy. Just put milk in a vat and cut it, turn it to curd and cut it up, piece of cake.’ But I found out it wasn't a piece of cake. And I fell in love with it anyway, so I never feel like I come to work. I just enjoy what I do.
“Making cheese – I like the physicality of it,” Aiken says. “There's such a combination of the grind, the cleaning, the cheese work, and then the mental part is also there. It doesn't look like people are doing much, scientifically or whatever, but those decisions are made later in the day or before the make, because we don't calibrate our milk. So we have to adjust to the differences in milk. Not really daily. It kind of goes in trends, but seasonal… within seasons it can change if they've changed feed or anything like that or something's changed.
“The reward is, at the end of the day you know you've made something that people are truly going to love. And it's such a great feeling.”
Aiken said he really embraces Mateo and Andy's vision of building a sustainable business in this region. “In this area,” he said “it's really hard to find a sustainable income and job and fulfillment, and this place truly provides it.”
On this day, Aiken is making the company’s Winnimere – after it is set in molds later in the day, it will have 60 days of aging in a wrap of spruce cambium, resulting in a creamy, spoonable cheese with tasting notes of bacon, sweet cream, and spruce.
In addition to Winnimere, Jasper Hill makes about a dozen famed cheeses, from its well-known Bayley Hazen Blue, to Willoughby, Whitney, and Moses Sleeper (most of the cheeses are named for local landmarks or individuals). The styles range from aged cheddars to soft-ripened Alpine cheeses.
We watch Aiken monitor a 3300-liter, curved-bottom vat aswirl with thickening milk. “The curvature of the vat, it just creates a rolling,” Aiken explains. “So it's a very gentle stir.” The speed of “the make,” he says, is all about trying to control the acidification from culture addition to molding, which, further down the line affects the texture. Acidification is key, he notes, “we want it at a certain pH when we mold. If you miss that target, you won't see your effects until three or four months later.”
Because, remember, cheese doesn’t lie.
