Award-Winning Vermont Goat Cheese

With winter nearly half over and spring in the offing, it’s time to relax and watch the snow come down with warm socks on our feet and hot cocoa in our hands. While we’re here, let’s take this opportunity to talk a little bit about a company in Websterville, Vermont, home of one of Black River Produce’s best loved brands: Vermont Creamery. Who doesn’t like a little cheese to go with their cocoa? Their chocolate-cherry chevre would pair well with it, no doubt. Nestled in this quaint little village, Vermont Creamery opened its doors in 1984 with a staff of just four people.

For those of you who might remember the 90’s, founder Allison Hooper had already made her products known by providing goat cheese for Vermont’s “Restaurateur of the Year” event at the Topnotch in Stowe, Vermont. Allison learned her cheesemaking methods in Brittany, France during a year that she spent abroad in college, and the resulting product was very popular with the chefs at the event.

Some Great Vermont Goat Cheese, $2,400, and the Farmer’s Market Where it all Began

Bob Reese got her the Stowe gig, and they found that they made such a great team there that they started the process of making and selling cheese at the Norwich Farmer’s Market with just $2,400 to start investing and purchasing materials. Allison may have been the cheese expert, but she and Bob, former Marketing Director with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, shared the cheese mongering duties. Those familiar little logs of paper-white chevre started popping up all over little retail locations. Whether plain, or coated in herbs, those cheese logs became highly recognizable and highly desirable due to their creative packaging and unique flavor profiles. Bob and Allison continued to add new products, and new staff members to the company through the years and kept winning awards too. They were honored with “Vermont’s Small Business Persons of the Year” by the Small Business Administration (SBA), and they founded the Vermont Cheese Council.

Better Butter All the Way Around

Vermont Creamery became the first company in America to make French-style cultured butter, and instead of following the ordinary blueprint for rectangular butter sticks, they made their round butter rolls echo the round cheese logs, making Vermont Creamery stand out even better against a sea of other options. Through the 2000s, they continued slowly to expand and to impress judges with their Bonne Bouche winning a blue ribbon at the American Cheese Society Competition in 2001, the very first year the cheese was introduced.

A Certified B Corporation

This team of Vermonters is now a Certified B Corporation with the main goal of consciously crafting the most delicious dairy. The company is devoted to promoting environmental sustainability and social responsibility, which means supporting local farmers and growers while caring for the land. They kept receiving milk and producing even during the pandemic without shutting down or laying off any employees, keeping their team and their community in paying jobs and fresh cheese.

A Full Line of New England Favorites

• Vermont Creamery currently produces
• 9 different flavors of fresh goat cheeses
• 5 different award-winning aged cheeses
• salted and unsalted cultured butters and culinary creams that will add depth and flavor to your favorite dishes.

Now, 43 years after Allison first learned how to make cheese, Vermont Creamery remains dedicated to the use of local ingredients to make the best possible quality product. Vermont Creamery promises, “You’ll never eat anything we don’t believe in,” and if you’ve ever spread their butter on your bagel or had their cranberry-cinnamon chèvre on your holiday buffet table, you know they believe in great taste as much as they believe in the people, places, and ingredients they work with here in Vermont.

February, 2024