Blog

Cheese of the week: Butternut

11/28/2011

We just can’t get enough of our locally-crafted alpine-style cheeses and it looks like the world can’t either: recent winner of the Gold Medal at the World Cheese Awards in England, Willow Hill Farm’s Butternut is in our spotlight this week.  The husband and wife team of Willow Smart and David Phinney run the diversified Willow Hill Farm in Milton,Vermont, and developed the recipe for Butternut themselves!  Made from organic raw Brown Swiss cow’s milk, these wheels of cave-aged semi-firm cheese taste true to their name as they are predominantly both buttery and nutty.  Those characteristics remain true even with seasonal variations in flavor which result from being aged in underground caves which incorporate a wall of the natural local bedrock.  This, plus being aged on farm-harvested ash planks, makes it safe to say that eating this cheese is truly tasting Vermont terroir!  Hard enough to be sliced up for a cheese board yet soft and creamy enough to melt in any cooking endeavor, we think you’ll join the judges in lauding Butternut no matter how you try it!