Jasper Hill Shoots for the Stars

The boys at Vermont's Jasper Hill Farms -- the Kehler brothers, cheesemakers and entrepreneurs extraordinaire -- aren't content just to make and sell their own wondrous varieties of cheese.

Those who have tried Jasper Hill's own cheeses, such as the lush and luscious Constant Bliss, know that the Kehlers already run a mighty fine dairy. But they have even larger ambitions. They've embarked on A Mission.

With investments from some of the biggest names in European specialty cheese (Neal's Yard Dairy and the French cheesemonger Herve Mons), Jasper Hill is transforming itself from a well respected small producer to something grander.

The Kehlers are installing state-of-the-art equipment, building five massive caves for aging and finishing cheese, and are cutting deals with other producers all over the country. The goal is to help other cheesemakers turn out finer cheese, and to help them sell more of it.

Here's a description from Condé Nast Portfolio magazine:

The Kehlers want to be all things to all artisanal cheesemakers, offering everything from starter recipes to sales and marketing expertise to a facility for finishing cheeses—an aging process that, for some products, means months and even years of rind-washing, turning, testing, and careful monitoring.

If all goes as planned, Jasper Hill will go from a boutique cheesemaker that turns out 75,000 pounds and grosses $800,000 annually into a multimillion-dollar juggernaut with its name on 20 times that amount of cheese by using a model that’s totally new to the American cheese industry. (Click here to read the full article.)

No doubt about it, the Jasper Hill project is further confirmation that big things are happening within the U.S. specialty cheese business.

In the last few months, an important specialty cheese distributor, Artisanal Cheese, was bought, and one of the largest U.S. supermarket chains, Kroger's, announced a partnership with influential cheesemonger, Murray's.

It all adds up to good news: Better cheese, and more of it, is on its way.