Jeff Roberts on the Future of Vermont’s Artisanal Creameries

In theater speak, there’s a role known as a dramaturg, a historian and scholar of sorts who can help contextualize a script for actors and directors in terms of the time, place, and customs that the narrative depicts. There’s no equivalent in cheese, title-wise, but arguably there should be, as functionally-speaking Vermont’s Jeff Roberts is exactly that. (Dramacurd? Dairyturg?) As the author of the Atlas of American Cheese, he’s had his finger on the pulse of American cheese making since the 1970s, performing various leadership roles for education and oversight programs and consortiums in the industry, acting as a consultant, and helping to shape the tremendous growth in American artisanal cheese in the last several decades, even without being a cheesemaker himself. Having made Vermont his home since the mid-90s, he is especially well-versed on the ongoing development of one of American artisanal cheese’s most important states.

Any discussion of Vermont’s role in artisanal American cheese must begin with a statement of the obvious: the state is geographically-speaking, tiny, compared to American cheese’s other frontrunners. Barely 20% of the size of Wisconsin, and 5% of the size of California, Vermont has nonetheless established itself as a powerhouse when it comes to its impact on artisanal cheese in this country. I spoke to Roberts recently on the significance of Vermont’s past, present, and future in America’s artisanal cheese industry.

Vermont’s Cheesemaking Past: Quietly at the Forefront

Looking back on the genesis of artisanal American cheese, “Everybody thought that Laura Chenel, (in California,) and a couple of other people from either the West Coast or the Upper Midwest were among the first,” says Roberts, in terms of applying European cheesemaking techniques to American dairy toward the creation of small-batch, handmade cheese. While Chenel was specifically introducing the idea of European-style goat’s milk cheese to American palates via a partnership with farm-to-table restaurateur forerunner Alice Waters, (potentially appealing to Baby Boomers who’d recently started traveling more in Europe,) Roberts maintains that high quality, small batch cheese was already happening in Vermont and in the upper East Coast. “The understanding of how you make a great cheese is rooted great milk,” says Roberts. “Vermont has this long dairy tradition, and this was still pre-industrialization of the milk supply,” he says. “We always had good cheese being made here. There were all kinds of small, pressed cheese, mostly cheddar producers dotted around the state using great milk.”

According to Roberts, Vermont’s petite stature worked in its favor where artisanal dairy was concerned. First, many of the state’s small dairy producers were largely able to skip the need to industrialize their operations by cooperating toward artisanal cheesemaking early in the game, working with highest quality, unadulterated dairy. Furthermore, those that did form co-ops and combine batches of milk had comparatively little distance to travel in order to do so. “When you transport milk, any long distance, it’s getting shaken up,” says Roberts, who explains that for making cheese, “It’s not the best thing in the world when it’s shaken like that.” American creamery businesses such as Vermont Shepherd, Grafton, and Shelburne Farms are some of the pioneers that Roberts names as having been central to the cheesemaking energy that rose out of Vermont in the 1980s and 1990s.

Contemporary Cheesemaking in Vermont: America’s Award-Winningest Cheese State

Vermont continued to be a trailblazer in the world of artisanal cheese throughout the 90s and into the 2000s. The state was the first to organize a professional association — the Vermont Cheese Council — to help establish standards of quality for the state’s dairy producers and to promote Vermont-made cheeses. (The VCC now boasts over 50 member creameries.) In the late 90s, with Roberts’s help, Shelburne Farms also organized “Pasture to Palate: The Art of Cheesemaking” intensive for aspiring cheesemakers, a 3-day residential program that began with participants milking cows and ended with them making cheddar cheese. “Somebody from the New York Times ran a little story about this in the Times’ Travel section,” says Roberts. “And we basically ran this program for three years just based on the number of phone calls and inquiries from that article. That put Vermont on the map in a different way, and created national recognition, not only just for Vermont but for handmade cheeses in general.” Partnerships with Slow Food International, and the establishment of a cheesemaking certificate program called the Vermont Institute continued to showcase Vermont as a force of energy where artisanal cheesemaking is concerned.

Now, Roberts points out Vermont’s track record at events such as the American Cheese Society as evidence of the state’s continuing importance to the overall American cheese scene. Vermont Shepherd won Best in Show in the year 2000 at ACS, and, according to Roberts “it really set a bar,” and inspired further innovation and creativity for the state’s dairy producers. Of note, Jasper Hill — arguably Vermont’s most famous creamery, set up shop around this time, buying their farm in 1998, and putting out their first cheese in 2003, which has a major impact on the following statistic: In 20 years of ACS conference competition, (there was no conference in both 2020 and 2021) Vermont creameries took the top prize in 7 of those 20 years. Again, consider the size compared to California and Wisconsin, or even Oregon and New York State, which have more recently entered the picture as heavy hitters. Read more about Jasper Hill.

“There isn’t any other state that has that kind of creme de la creme series of awards than Vermont,” says Roberts. “I’m so blown away when I think of that because if anything what illustrates is the attention to quality across the board. Whether you’re making cheese, or beer, or bread or whatever, we are one of the best.”

Vermont’s Cheesemaking Future: The Challenge of Passing the Torch

While Vermont’s artisanal cheese industry continues to grow and innovate, and new creameries enter the picture, one concern looming ahead is the passing of the torch for some of the small creameries that have been in the game since the beginning, and whose owners are now reaching retirement age. “Unlike Europe, we’re not talking about multi-generational operations,” says Roberts. “If anything, what we see with some of the sales of these really top-quality cheese companies is that they’re being bought up [by larger corporations] and then they’re expanding. What I’m concerned about is the current generation finding a buyer — if it doesn’t stay within the family — being a significant hurdle.”

While Massachusetts creamery Round Table Farm, whom we previously profiled, demonstrates how creamery owners problem-solved in order to pass the torch to new owners, Roberts points out that Vermont’s unique location poses an additional difficulty. “There are people out there, but if you’re coming from a larger state, the idea of essentially becoming isolated is a challenge,” says Roberts. “This is a very focused profession, you gotta be happy with being where it’s just you and the cows or the goats or whatever.” On top of which, buying into an established company may not appeal to aspiring cheesemaker. “Marketing as an established business isn’t easy,” says Roberst. “And I know there are companies that have gone under because there was nobody there to buy it.” The hope is that Vermont creameries on the market don’t get snapped up by big, European-owned cheese conglomerates. Vermont is a small state, and its quality is kept high by its small-scale mentality. “We don’t need to push cheese out the door,” Roberts says. “That’s not what we are about.”