Winnimere has a strong and wild aroma, a rich flavor and variable taste - some batches are fruity, others taste more like ham and onion. By day 3, the cheese goes to the caves for “ripening and fretting,” Kehler said. It is formed and washed in a salt brine, and wrapped in spruce cambium, an inner membrane of bark, from trees harvested on the farm. After rennett is added the milk coagulates before your eyes, a fascinating process that is monitored closely and timed precisely. Winnimere is made at the Greensboro farm with Ayrshire milk, which on certain production days goes directly from the pipeline in the barn to the fermenting tank. “We manage our herd year-round to produce this cheese seasonally,” Kehler said. This diet produces a richer milk suitable for Winnimere, a raw-milk cheese that is aged 60 days, as federal regulation requires of raw-milk cheeses. Winnimere is a seasonal cheese made when the cows move off pasture and come inside, where they eat dry hay. Jasper Hill sells $8 million of cheese annually, Kehler said. This is our response to globalization: We have the opportunity to extract wealth and redistribute it in our community in a different way.” “A vibrant community that’s not completely dependent on globalization. “For us, cheese has always been a vehicle to achieve this other thing,” Mateo Kehler, 44, said. Their business approach and interest, which calls for replicating Jasper Hill at other Greensboro farms, is also distinct. They’ve achieved success because they’ve been collaborative, and I think people really admire them for that.” “They’re helping everybody in the industry learn, and they have a great willingness to share this incredibly technical knowledge that’s expensive to access. “They’re incredibly collaborative,” Donnelly said of the Kehlers. In addition, the inn she owns with her husband in Greensboro, Lakeview Inn, is the site of food/cheese events in the Kingdom, and a place where Jasper Hill interns stay. Donnelly is co-director of the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese and author of a forthcoming book, “Cheese and Microbes.”ĭonnelly's research lab collaborates with Jasper Hill on projects related to milk quality and cheese safety, she said by email. She brings visiting European cheesemakers to Jasper Hill, and says they are “heartened” and excited by the Greensboro enterprise. “In the United States they’ve come up with something that’s really unique and what I think is really fun,” said Catherine Donnelly, a food microbiologist who is a professor of nutrition and food science at the University of Vermont. A cheese aged at Jasper Hill and made by Cabot, Cabot Clothbound Cheddar, is the other Jasper Hill product that won best of show (2006). In the seven-vault, multi-million dollar cheese cave, the Kehlers and their team age, market and distribute cheeses made by other Vermont cheesemakers and one from New Hampshire. They also use milk from neighboring farms to make cheese, some of which is produced at the Food Venture Center in Hardwick. On their farm in Greensboro, the Kehlers milk cows and make cheese - including raw-milk cheeses - in a cheese-making room attached to the barn. It is probable that Jasper Hill Farm and its associated cheese cellar is the only operation of its kind in the United States, according to a couple of cheese experts. No similar scientific inquiry is targeting the human DNA at the Greensboro barn, to determine if its people are “normal.” “I suppose some people do, but not normal people.”Ī laboratory at the Cellars at Jasper Hill, an aging cave across the road from the farm, is identifying and analyzing the microbial population of the cheeses in an effort to map the Jasper Hill genome. “Something like that isn’t something that you ever expect to win,” said Scott Harbour, 28, operations manager at Jasper Hill Farm. They carried a couple of boxes of Winnimere to celebrate the win. With a day left at the cheese festival after the win was announced last August, and only one piece of Winnimere in Wisconsin, a couple of Jasper Hill employees hopped in their car and drove to Madison. This was a surprise and a joy for the Jasper Hill cheesemakers, who say Winnimere is the “heart and soul” of the business. The most recent victory came in August, when a rich, runny and smelly cheese called Winnimere took top honors at the event in Madison, Wis. In its 10 years as a farmstead cheesemaker, Jasper Hill has produced two “best of” awards from the American Cheese Society at its annual conference and competition. It’s a winning combination, as another number makes plain: Two. These 90 organisms and the countless microorganisms in their midst work together to make cheese. Throw in the co-owners, brothers Mateo and Andy Kehler, and the score is even. GREENSBORO – There are more milking cows than people at Jasper Hill Farm, but not by a lot: 45 Ayrshires to 43 employees.
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