A Cheese Lover’s Guide to Upstate New York

Nettle's Meadow Dairy photo credit Maret Sotkiewicz

In upstate New York, demand for locally crafted food and a shift by dairies to making value-added products has prompted a wealth of artisan cheese making. It's a win-win for creameries, who needed additional revenue streams, and turophiles, who can sample the tastes of the region in an array of cheeses from authentic Dutch cow's milk gouda to innovative goat's milk blue. This development follows a long history of dairying in the area. The windswept landscape offers a prime environment for raising ruminants that produce high-quality milk.

Asgaard Farm & Dairy, Au Sable Forks, New York

Buying a pet goat for their young daughter surprisingly led David Brunner and Rhonda Butler into cheesemaking. "We all fell in love with goats," says Butler. They were restoring Asgaard Farm, artist and activist Rockwell Kent's former home nestled in the Adirondacks and decided cheese production would be the focus of their regenerative farm.

This small-scale operation "produces wonderful goat milk cheeses," says Kate Arding of Talbott & Arding Cheese and Provisions in Hudson, New York. Their Barkeater Bûche a vegetable ash coated log, chevre, and the cleverly-named Greek-style Fet.a.ccompli have won awards from the American Cheese Society. All elements of the farm exist to support the 60 goats whose natural cycle is honored and followed, and whose grazing pasture is rotated during milking season. "The quality of Asgaard's milk is off the charts good as is the consistency, texture and flavor of their cheese," comments Arding.

Harpersfield Cheese and Dairy, LLC., Jefferson, New York

Harpersfield photo credit Rachel Brovetto

Looking to create a niche, the Brovetto family began producing Tilsit, a semi-hard German table cheese, in 2000. An homage to patriarch Ronald's Italian German background, it fit with their research of European cheeses made from grass-fed animals. They perfected the recipe and knowing caraway pairs well with Tilsit, experimented with adding alternative spices and flavors.

"There's kind of a wide range, all variations on a theme," says Anne Saxelby of Saxelby's Cheesemongers. "Flavors that you might expect, like cumin seed. But they'll do some really interesting stuff like one with lapsang souchong tea and a beer-soaked version, something I had never seen before."

Dairy farmers since 1972, the Brovettos have bred their mix of Jerseys and Holsteins. Ron's son, Russ, and granddaughter, Rachel, age the cheese for three months in a mountainside cave. "The biggest thing is, you learn as you go," Russ says. "The other things obviously are good clean milk, product, (facility) cleaning and maintenance."

Jake’s Gouda, Deansboro, New York

Jake's Gouda Credit to The Ad Agency Group, Inc

Jake and Sylvia Stoltzfus faithfully follow practices that originated in Gouda, Holland, turning wheels coated in cream instead of wax on imported Dutch pine planks (American pine has an odor) to produce Jake's Gouda. Few small cheesemakers make gouda because of the labor-intensive process. "We just wanted to make the cheese right," Sylvia says. Jake had met an equipment maker from Holland who also provided a recipe. The Amish couple, who grow their Holsteins' feed, won 4th place in the 2011 United States Cheese Championships, gouda category, their first year of production. Products now include baby, smoked, and flavored gouda.

"I love their cheese because especially their extra-aged gouda is pretty unique," enthuses Saxelby. "We don't have too many cheeses that are being aged for that amount of time and have that kind of crystallization. It's an intense kind of butterscotchy gouda-style cheese that's really distinctive."

Lively Run Goat Farm & Dairy – Interlaken, New York

Cutting curds photo credit Lively Run Goat Dairy

The Messmer family bought Lively Run, a pioneer in goat cheese making in the United States, in 1995. Saxelby calls Pete Messmer "an excellent cheesemaker and innovator." Cayuga Blue, a goat's milk blue cheese, "kind of won my heart back in the day," she reflects, "because it was just so unique. It wasn't like any other blue cheese or goat cheese I had before. It kind of exists in its own category."

Messmer tries to capture and enhance the flavors that occur naturally in the milk to make cheese (now cow and goat) that is reflective of their region, worthwhile, and interesting. "What we're trying to do, especially with our Cayuga Blue and Finger Lakes Gold," he explains, "is create products that are like a new style of cheese, not just a copycat of a pre-existing cheese," referring to European-style cheeses on which many creameries model their products. Both received awards from The American Cheese Society.

Creating a better, healthier food system for all is part of Lively Run's mission. They pay well over the market price to nearby dairy farms for milk and work with them to ensure high levels of animal welfare and sustainability.

Nettle Meadow Farm and Artisan Cheese, Thurman, New York

Nettle's Meadow Photo credit Maret Sotkiewicz

Nettle Meadow owners and cheesemakers Sheila Flanagan and Lorraine Lambiase made goat cheese as a hobby when a self-described "true midlife crisis" led them to cash in their retirement plans and move from California to this Adirondack goat farm in 2005.

Creativity, consistency, and a deep, abiding love for animals guide their cheesemaking. Flanagan's frequently been told customers can taste the animals' happiness in the cheese. The farm has an animal sanctuary with well over 100 animals and aged ruminants. "The only way that Lorraine and I can do what we do in making cheese," says Flanagan, "is using every last ounce of any quote, unquote profit of proceeds to go back into the retirement of the injured and other sanctuary animals."

Nettle Meadow's best known for its award-winning Kunik, "a hefty puck triple creme enhanced with goat milk, a massive crowd-pleaser," raves Ivy Ronquillo of Second Mouse Cheese, in Pleasantville, New York. They produce about 20 cheeses, some seasonal, including rarities like Fromage blanc and fromage frais. Ronquillo says Amber Kunik, washed in beer and whiskey, is a well-kept industry secret. "Despite wide distribution, Nettle Meadow's largely mixed milk cheeses are small-batch and the epitome of artisan," she adds.

A second retail space recently opened in Lake Luzerne's historic Hitching Post; a new production space with a viewing area, cheese tasting room, and tavern are scheduled to open there this spring.

Sugarhouse Creamery, Upper Jay, New York

In business since the end of 2013, Margot Brooks and husband Alex Eaton "are here on this little parcel of land in the Adirondacks," says Brooks, "just trying to use the land to live symbiotically with and on the land and use this herd of ruminants to bring nutrients to this land and feed us in our community." It's a simple, poetic sentiment, based on old European models of small creameries that sold what they produced right at the farm. Sugarhouse's success is borne out by the fact that they sell over half of their small batch production at their farm store in addition to nearby restaurants, cheese shops, specialty grocers, and farmer’s markets.

Arding, who looks for consistency, really good technique, flavor, and balance, gushes, "I love them." She cites their Little Dickens, "a little bit like a robiola in style" and the Dutch knuckle, "a sort of hybrid of an Alpine-style cheese and a gouda, which is incredible." Brooks, raised on her family's dairy farm, credits the milk from their Brown Swiss herd and their skilled cheese maker Casey Galligan. "They know their stuff," adds Arding.