volume 8, number 3 March 2003
New Mexico's Premier Food, Arts and Lifestyle Magazine

These days most of us who are from here are not really from here. In this migratory journey of modern life, we have adopted New Mexico—or, more accurately, New Mexico has adopted us. Piñon smoke and chile and unremitting sun have marked us for their own.

Still, we are apt to have our bouts of what can only be called homesickness. A substantial part of a life is the places you have lived it, and there is nothing quite like the memory of food to send us back down the lane along which we came.

When you come from Vermont, as I do, there is a great deal to be missed. In spring there is new maple syrup; in summer, butter-and-sugar sweet corn, sold fresh beside the fields from which it was picked. In autumn there is the flood of sweet apple cider. And always there is Vermont cheddar cheese.

In the landscape of fromage, America as a nation hardly stands tall. One need think only of that travesty labeled "American cheese." The colors of our cheeses run unnaturally bright. Their textures range between overcooked pasta and window putty. Their flavors evoke the stale air of mass processing and lengthy packaging. As a rule, the cheeses we find in our standard groceries taste best when overpowered by something else—a Ritz cracker, perhaps, or a can of cheap beer.

Vermont's cheddars are the noteworthy exceptions to this. My great-grandfather ran a small general store in a one-horse Vermont town, and my own affection for sharp cheddar began at an early age. A great wheel of extra-sharp Vermont cheddar always sat in regal state beside the ancient cash register, next to the penny chocolates and the gallon jar of pickled eggs. Back then a dollar would buy you an ample crumbly wedge, wrapped in simple butcher's paper for transport.

West Rupert, Vt., was still what they called "dry" then—nary a drop of beer or wine to be had. Instead, the cheese was likely to make its appearance with dessert—the one concession to decadence for that Puritan New England stock. James Beard's acid remarks notwithstanding, I still believe that sharp cheddar goes superbly with a fresh apple pie. The mark of a fresh apple pie is that the apples—and not just the pie—are the things fresh. This means: on the tart side of sweet. Together with pie, cheddar rounds out the mouth's experience, leaving it with the memory of "full" rather than "flat." My grandfather would never have eaten his pie without his cheddar, which he kept in the dark warmth of the kitchen cupboard to further foster the sharpening process.

I doubt that thirty years ago much Vermont cheddar made it to New Mexico. Plainly this is no longer the case. A recent visit to Whole Foods in Santa Fe netted six Vermont cheddars—three each from the Cabot Creamery Cooperative and the Grafton Village Cheese Company.

As mass-produced cheeses go, Cabot maintains a respectable consistency in its standard offerings, while achieving a near "farmhouse" quality on the high end. Among those displayed at Whole Foods you should readily find Cabot's Organic Extra Sharp, which comes closest to that benchmark cheese of my childhood. This is a cheese you need never chew. It settles in the mouth on a smooth cushion of butterfat and melts into the very definition of fine Yankee cheddar (and Yankee character)—powerful, but not rancorous; sharp, but not rude. This cheese was rated "Most Outstanding" at the last National Milk Producer's Federation Annual Cheese Competition in Dallas. At $9.99 a pound, it is worth every penny.

Grafton Village Cheddar is a much smaller operation. Made from higher butterfat Jersey milk (rather than from the milk of the ubiquitous and high-yield black-and-white Holsteins), Grafton's small-batch cheeses rival those at Cabot's top end. Grafton's flagship Classic Reserve Extra Sharp—available at Whole Foods—is an unabashedly serious Vermont cheddar, with what is to my mouth a rougher entrance and a nuttier and drier finish than the Cabot mentioned above. For $7.99 a pound, Grafton's (two-year) Classic Reserve offers an affordable intimation of what their Super-Aged (three-year) Gold and Four-Star (four-year) Cheddar are able to promise.

Needless to say, these latter do not come cheaply, and at the time of my visit to Whole Foods they were not stocked. They are, however, easily obtained via the Internet—as are other small-run Vermont cheeses that have yet to make it to most of our southwestern groceries. Among these other, smaller operations two cheddars stand out: Shelburne Farm's Farmhouse Cheddar, hand-made from Brown Swiss milk; and Vermont Butter and Cheese Company's Goat Cheddar.

Altogether, there are close to thirty Vermont cheese makers—most of these just tiny operations holding their own in a nation otherwise overrun by orange cheese. The Vermont Cheese Council website (www.vtcheese.com) provides background and ordering information for most of these.

The cold days and long nights of winter are here, and the time for hot chile—and strong cheddar—is again upon us.

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