What's New at Jasper Hill | The Cheese Professor

The Jasper Hill Farm lineup reads like a who’s who list of domestic cheeses: Alpha Tolman, Bayley Hazen, Harbison, and Moses Sleeper. All are named for rock stars or at very least local characters. Founded by Kehler brothers Andy and Mateo and their wives, Jasper Hill has been producing cheese in the Northeast Kingdom of Greensboro, Vermont, since 2003, making it one of the oldest cheesemaking operations in an area whose cheese production now challenges Wisconsin’s right to claim itself as the cheese state.

Beginning with a mission to make European style cheeses uncommonly produced in the States at the time, their underground cheese cave helped catapult them from a small, family dairy operation, to what it is today: The Cellars at Jasper Hill Farm. Along with making their own cheeses, The Cellars offers affinage, marketing, and distribution services to other local dairies. Six producers with 6 herds of cows produce 13 kinds of cheese that carry the Cellars at Jasper Hill Farm label. The 4 listed above are all Jasper Hill’s own creations, but other stars from the partnership operations include Landaff Creamery’s Landaff, Cabot’s Clothbound Cheddar, and Von Trapp Farmstead Oma.

Innovation driven by ethos—“meaningful work in a place that we love”—has always pushed Jasper Hill forward, and never has it been more important to do so than now. With small businesses, especially small food businesses, struggling in the wake of a COVID climate, meaningful creative thinking is tantamount to long-term sustainability. In a recent article for Wine Spectator, Mateo Kehler outlined how he had to lease out his herd to neighboring farms to stay solvent, concluding: “We're going to survive this, but only if we can figure out the cash flow through the summer."

(For related reading on Cheese Professor, see Kristine Hansen’s article Three Ways Wisconsin Cheesemakers are Responding to COVID-19.)

I recently spoke with Zoe Brickley who manages marketing at Jasper Hill Farm about several new initiatives that were developed over the summer, borne of the necessity of this moment to help keep them operating in full force during uncertain times.

New Equipment

Prior to this year, most Jasper Hill cheeses were only available by direct order to individual consumers, wholesale to restaurants, or as whole wheels to specialty retail shops that could do their own cutting. (Exceptions were small, soft cheeses like Harbison that don’t require cutting for retail.) “We had known that the writing was on the wall,” says Brickley, regarding the need to have more available sales channels to consumers when restaurants were reduced to takeout only and labor resources were stretched thin. Offering precut and vacuum-sealed selections from some of Jasper Hill’s most popular hard cheeses—Alpha Tolman, Clothbound Cheddar, and Landaff—was a solution that not only helped the brand get shelf space in new retailers, but “in fact, helped to stay in sellers we were already in” says Brickley.

The Japanese cutting machine was a lifeline, and was fast-tracked out of necessity. “We applied for a grant to help us afford the machine, and market and design package art. We rolled out really quickly. I designed it myself and I’m not a graphics pro,” Brickley says.

The new Jasper Hill precuts are already on grocery shelves, and work is in process for professionally designed labels that will be on shelves in time for the holidays.

New Cheese Club

Hoping to capitalize on their cult status among cheesemakers, in August 2020, Jasper Hill launched a reboot of their existing monthly cheese club, which promised subscribers access to limited release products as well as a first taste of any new products. The monthly subscription box includes a minimum of 3 cheeses, as well as additional foodstuffs for pairing as well as fun cheese tools and accoutrements.

Brickley describes the response to the new club as enthusiastic: “We had an old ‘legacy club’ sort of on autopilot, and gave existing members the opportunity to switch over, most of whom did. We also added 100 new subscribers, more than we had hoped for.” The August and September subscriptions sold out within a matter of days. Click here to get yourself in the mix for October or beyond.

Each month costs $100, (shipping included,) and subscribers are emailed two weeks in advance of their box with an announcement of its contents. Subscribers can choose to opt out for a month, or to add additional items to the shipment.

New Cheese

In the tradition of giving Jasper Hill’s cheeses names of Greensboro community characters, the latest—Whitney—is named for the farm’s longest-standing employee, Tim Whitney, whose work ethic inspires a wine washed mountain cheese as “stoic and reliable” as he is.

The brand’s stalwart seller Alpha Tolman provided a roadmap for Whitney. Both are washed curd cheeses, where whey is rinsed from the curds in the vat, slowing acidification and resulting in a smooth, semi-firm texture. Whitney gets additional flavor treatment from spent yeast from the fermentation tanks from a nearby natural winery La Garagista. Brickley describes Alpha Tolman—a robust appenzeller-inspired Alpine cheese—as part of a “20 year program” given the amount of time it took to experiment with a recipe whose results would not be known until the cheese had sufficient time to age.

Whitney was therefore developed to fit a particular niche, says Brickley. “(It’s) like an intersection of several products, with a relatively manageable price point because it’s younger, and will do well with our customers.” Whitney will also help the team move product more quickly; aged cheeses incur more overhead costs for real estate while they ripen for up to a year, whereas Whitney is showroom ready in just a couple of months. “We still want to honor Alpha Tolman as a great American cheese,” says Brickley, “but Whitney helps free up inventory and has the possibility of being a premium cooking cheese or great for sandwiches. It’s tasty, snacky, creamy, and melty—a loveable cheese.”