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A 20,000-square-foot cave for aging Vermont cheese

Sylvia Carter

March 30, 2008

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Jasper Hill Farm outside Greensboro will change cheese-making in Vermont - and perhaps in this country. I'd put money on it.

Mateo Kehler, who owns Jasper Hill with his wife, Angie, his brother Andy and Andy's wife, Victoria, does not have time for visitors, at least not yet.

That's because the Kehlers are busy constructing a 20,000- square-foot cave for aging cheeses. Already, they are sending their products for care and aging because Mateo Kehler has developed a fine reputation for this art, called affinage. He visited similar facilities in France and sought design advice. His caves will have seven vaults for different types of cheeses, all beneath 6 to 9 feet of soil and most of them naturally cooled. The blasting into the bedrock removed 27,000 cubic yards of material.

"We will have a long-term relationship diagnosing [problems with] cheese and helping cheese-makers improve the quality of their products," Mateo Kehler said. "What we do is just too much work" to have things go wrong with the cheeses, he went on. "In France, most of the production goes to an affineur, who takes on the responsibility."

Since so much of what affineurs, the people who care for cheese, need to know is in French, Mateo and his wife are taking French lessons and will make it possible for future employees to learn it, too.

"It's going to change cheese-making in Vermont," Mateo said, "and create viability in the working landscape. The landscape is precious. It gives Vermont its character." The Kehlers rescued Jasper Hill, which had fallen into dereliction like so many farms in Vermont. In the summer of 1998 alone, Greensboro lost five dairy farms. Meteo said he hopes that hiring workers for the aging business will provide opportunities for young people to stay in the area.

Mateo Kehler specializes in superb blue cheeses, made from the raw milk of the family's Ayrshire herd. He has named some of his cheeses for Revolutionary war heroes, Constant Bliss (which could also describe eating the cheese) and Moses Sleeper. Another one, Bayley Hazen, is named for the blockhouse where one of the northernmost skirmishes of the war occurred in September, 1781. Winnimere, a cheese made in the style of a Swiss Forsterkase, is washed with brine and a Lambic-style ale brewed from wild yeasts found in the aging cellar, then wrapped in spruce.

For more information, visit jasperhillfarm.com.

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