Jasper Hill's Winnimere

Jasper Hill Farm produces a small range of cheeses made by hand using milk from the farm’s own herd of 50 Ayrshire cows and two other local farms. The cows at Jasper Hill spend the summer grazing in small fields of wild flowers and grasses, between spruce forests and maple trees.

The cheese house is situated in the middle of the farm, next to the milking parlour. Every morning at 6am milk from the previous evening and that morning is pumped all of 20 yards from the cows to the dairy.

The cheese made are:

Bayley Hazen Blue – named after the nearby Bayley Hazen military road, is a dense blue cheese with rich, spicy aromas of fennel and pepper.

Constant Bliss – named after a local revolutionary war scout, is a bloomy rind, lactic set cheese with salty, sweet and tender paste.

Moses Sleeper - named after another war scout who died on Bayley Hazen road with Constant Bliss. This cheese has a thin, bloomy rind and a soft, almost runny paste.

Harbison - named after the oldest resident of Greensboro, Harbison is a brand new cheese at Jasper Hill, with the very first batches being made during my visit. 

The final cheese made at Jasper Hill Farm is particularly special. A washed rind cheese made only in the winter and spring months.

Modelled on the French/Swiss alpine cheese, Vacherin Mont d’Or, this cheese is encased in a band of spruce cambium, cut from the trees surrounding the farm. The cheese is called Winnimere, and is named after a small lane which runs down through the woods from the village of Greensboro to Lake Caspian.

Winnimere was not being during my stay at Jasper Hill, but the cambium used to surround the cheese is being cut for next season’s production. Cambium is the thin, soft layer between the bark and wood of a tree (the layer which the sap flows up a tree in).

The cambium strap around the cheese somewhat synchronises the farm’s cheese production with that of the farms in eastern mountains of France. It introduces an element of the wild, natural landscape to the cheese by impregnating the cheese with a resinous, woody aroma of the spruce forests, reflects the region and terroir.

Another unique way this cheese is tied to the farm is perhaps less tangible or visible. It lies in the liquid which is rubbed into the rind of the cheese as it sits in the Cellars at Jasper Hill, ripening. The farm takes its name from a previous owner, Mr Jasper Hill, who was part of the large family of the area (Greensboro was previously known as Hillsborough). Two miles away from the farm is one of Vermont’s most interesting and dynamic brewers, Shaun Hill, who runs Hill Farmstead Brewery. Were Jasper still alive today, Shaun would be his cousin. Shaun produces a number of beers on a micro scale, each brew being made with a single hop type, resulting in some really delicate, floral, tropical fruit, honeyed flavours. All the beers are named after one of his ancestors. In autumn, a batch of beer is made with no addition of yeast, and is taken into the Cellars at Jasper Hill to ferment. Deep underground, in the concrete vaults full of cheeses, the liquor become seeded with wild lactobacillus bacteria strains specific to the vaults. These, along with the many types of yeast present in the underground atmosphere ferment the liquor into alcoholic beer.          

The last batch of end-of-season Winnimere were about to the shipped out of the cellars on the first week of my time at Jasper Hill, and I managed to get hold of one before they all went.

It was superb. A sticky, pungent rind and the band of cambium held together the tenderest of cheeses inside - seriously rich and buttery like clotted cream; savoury and almost smoky like decent bacon; tangy and fruity when eaten with the rind. The paste was silky soft, and the rind had that discreet gritty bite a washed rind can have. The whole thing was scented with spruce wood.

Picture of Winnimere from the Jasper Hill
website

And to drink with this cheese from Jasper Hill Farm… Edward - made by Hill Farmstead Brewery.