Our milk comes from 18 local Vermont farms, one in New Hampshire, two in New York and one in Quebec.
Our cream comes from St Albans Cooperative Creamery and Booth Brothers Dairy. Both are located in Vermont.

Yes. All of our productsts are pasteurized. In the U.S., by law, all fresh cheeses aged less than 60 days require pasteurization.

Our farms use a diet consisting mostly of dry hay, grain, and pasture. Some of the farms feed corn silage when they have a fresh local supply.

In Vermont we are able to purchase milk and cream that is rBST-free. This means that the supplying farms are required to provide an affadavit stating that they do not use rBST to boost milk production in their cows.
There is no rBST equivalent for goats. Goat farmers do not use growth hormones to boost milk production.

FDA requires that all milk be tested for antibiotics prior to receiving at the creamery. This not only assures public health and safety but also that our starter cultures will do their job when we make the cheese.

We use carefully selected strains of lactic cultures that are typical for the kinds of cheeses we produce.

Yes. Cheese is made from milk with a bacterial culture added to give it taste. This culture will consume almost all the lactose that remains in the milk to produce flavor. When we make cheese we convert lactose which is the milk sugar, into lactic acid. This is the fermentation process that makes cheese. The starter culture in cheese will metabolize the lactose in the cheesemaking process. This is why cheese may be a good source of dairy for people who have difficulty digesting lactose.

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Maintain product in cold temperature: keep it under refrigeration

For the cheese in a cup, make sure that after opening you store the cheese in its original container. This reduces the risk of contamination and preserves the flavor longer. Use a clean utensil when removing a serving. Keeping other foods out of the container will help to preserve it.
After opening the Chèvre, we recommend wrapping it tightly in plastic film and storing it in the cheese drawer of your refrigerator. Unlike an aged or ripened Chevre which has a rind that breathes, this is a fresh cheese and you want to store it as air tight as possible.

The goat cheeses and Fromage Blanc can be frozen. They should be frozen in their original packaging and thawed under refrigeration to reduce separation. For the cup cheeses, if you see some liquid in the container, just pour it off or blend it. Because these cheeses have been made without stabilizers and emulsifiers to bind the water, you will see some separation after freezing.
We do not recommend freezing fresh cheeses that are higher in fat like Crème Fraîche and Mascarpone. Even the Quark which is only 11% fat should not be frozen.
For crumbled goat cheese to put on a salad, freeze the log and then partially thaw to crumble.

All our products packaged in a cup should be served cold, just from the refrigerator. For the Chèvre we recommend leaving it at room temperature 30 minutes to an hour before serving. This gives you a very creamy and flavorful Chevre. The cheese will be easier to slice when cold. You can use dental floss for a clean slice.

We are using microbial rennet. This means that our cheeses can be consumed by vegetarians.

Crème Fraîche and Mascarpone will not whip up properly if they have been frozen. We advise you to avoid freezing. If you accidentally freeze cream, thaw it in the refrigerator, never at room temperature! Freezing will not harm the flavor but will make the texture grainy.

Butter is a food product, which is made exclusively from milk, cream or both, with or without common salt, and containing at least 80 percent milk fat by weight.

Cultured butter is made with pasteurized cream in a churn just like regular butter with one added step. After pasteurization, the cream is fermented by adding a carefully selected bacterial culture. The cream must rest for one day in a vat to allow the culture to produce a complex blend of flavor compounds. This is the source of the flavor difference between cultured butter and regular butter. After the fermenation, the cream is churned into butter.

Yes. Cultured butter is regular butter with a bacterial culture added to give it taste. This culture will consume almost all of the lactose that remains in regular butter to produce flavor.

We only make an 86% butterfat Cultured Butter. However you can put our butter in the microwave for 5 seconds to make it soft.

Our butter is only made with cows’ cream.

Our butter can be frozen in its original packaging for up to 4 months.

Once opened, refrigerate butter in its original barrier film inside of its resealable envelope in the coldest part of the refrigerator, not in the refrigerator door! We recommend slicing from the roll and keeping the remainder of butter in the barrier film. This film helps to protect the butter from absorbing odors from other foods in your refrigerator.
Fresh cultured butter should have a delicate cream and nutty flavor and a pale yellow color. Butter quickly picks up "off" flavors during storage and when exposed to oxygen. Store butter away from foods with strong odors. If butter has an "off" flavor it does not necessarily mean the butter is unsafe to eat.

To keep the freshness and quality of the butter we do not recommend leaving it over 3 hours at room temperature. If you leave it out longer the flavor and color may be affected. To make it soft, place the needed amount of butter in a dish and microwave for 5 seconds. Or, just take it out of the refrigerator for about ten minutes. This butter softens quickly.

- Unsalted Cultured Butter: 8 oz, 2 lbs and 30 lbs
- Lightly Salted Cultured Butter: 8 oz and 1 lb
- Sea Salt Cultured Butter: 6 oz

The nice pale yellow comes from the high quality of our cream, which relates to the diet of the cows. When cows are grazing on grass in a pasture, they are eating a lot of carotene found in the grass. Carotene is the vegetable form of vitamin A found not only in carrots but also in all yellow/orange vegetables.
Butter that is churned in a “batch” or “barrel” churn is more yellow than butter that is manufactured in a “continuous” churn.

Clarified butter is a purified, thicker form of butter that’s been melted and has had the water and milk solids separated from the clarified or clear part. Because the water has been extracted, clarified butter will not burn at high temperatures, and, therefore, is most commonly used as a fat for cooking, or as a base for sauces like Hollandaise and Béarnaise. The disadvantage of using clarified butter is that much of the butter flavor is lost in the process of clarification.
Our 86% butterfat Cultured Butter is the best alternative to clarifying butter!

To make one pound of clarified butter, you will need about 1-1/4 lbs. of unsalted cultured butter. Melt butter over moderate heat. Stir the butter but don’t let it boil; this allows the milk solids to separate from the liquid butter. Upon heating, butter will separate into three distinct layers: foamy milk solids on top, clarified butter in the middle and milk solids on the bottom. As the butter continues to warm, skim froth from the surface and discard. When froth is eliminated, carefully pour off the clear, melted clarified butter into another container, leaving the milk solids at the bottom of the saucepan. Discard milk solids. Clarified butter can be used immediately or kept in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to three or four weeks. Re-melt to use.

Our products are free from eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy, wheat and gluten.

All milk products contain a small amount of trans fatty acids because it occurs naturally in milk from the cows feed. We do not add any hydrogenated fats to the cheeses which are typically responsible for the high trans fat content of processed foods.
All our products contain less than 0.5 grams of trans fatty acid per 100 grams of product.
It is considered as 0 grams of trans fat by the FDA regulation.

Comparing butterfat in the Vermont Butter and Cheese Company product line:

We don’t add vitamins to our products; however vitamin D is naturally present in the milk. Products such as butter, cheese, yogurt, eggs and fish are the richest sources of vitamin D. Vitamin D is needed for the absorption of calcium and the prevention of osteoporosis.

Yes. Our butter is so lightly salted that you will not pick up the salt flavor. We add a small amount of salt to accentuate the cultured flavor.

Place the butter in the microwave for 5 seconds to make it spreadable.

If you are making a sauce, you do not need to adjust your recipe. The higher butter fat will only improve a beurre blanc and add flavor to your food. When making pastry, we suggest that you add more water to the dough. This butter will give a wonderful elasticity to your dough but you will need to add an additional tablespoon of water to your regular recipe to pull the ingredients together.

Cultured butter has a low pH. Foods that are similar in pH will blend well together. Our butter blends well with low pH foods such as wine and vinegar. It will hold together well in a beurre blanc.
The cultured flavor and high butterfat provide a more complex flavor to food both savory and sweet.

No, Vermont Butter and Cheese is the company name. We make premium butter, and we make a line of cow and goat cheeses. We do not blend butter with cheese.

Our products are sold in many specialty food stores, cheese shops, coops, better supermarkets with good delis, Whole Foods Markets, Wegmans, Wild Oats, and independent retailers. Call us at 800-884-6287 and we will try to locate a retailer near you.

Only as a last resort. Our products require overnight shipping with ice packs and packing peanuts, not to mention a Styrofoam cooler that is not easy for you dispose of. The shipping is very expensive so we try to locate a retailer for you.

We sell through wholesale distributors who sell to specialty stores and restaurants. This form of distribution assures that our products will stay cold on a refrigerated truck from our creamery to the store or restaurant.

Our products are not organic. The commercial goats’ milk industry is only as old as our company. It is really in its infancy. Goat management is not an intensive farm enterprise. Goat farmers love their animals and pay a great deal of attention to detail and sustainable farm systems.

Yes! All of our Cow's Milk products are listed as Kosher.
To download a copy of our certificate please click on the KOF-K logo