Windsor Dairy's Line of Raw Milk Cheeses

Not long ago you had to travel to Europe or Amish country to purchase handmade raw-milk cheeses, crafted from grass fed organic cow's milk. Now that Windsor Dairy has introduced its own line of artisan cheeses, you only have to travel as far as the Boulder or Longmont farmer's markets to enjoy these delicious traditionally made cheeses.
These farmstead cheeses have evolved out of the dairy's mission to become a local raw-milk micro-creamery that is committed to producing delicious and nutritious dairy products in an environmentally sustainable and traditional manner. The cheeses are made on the farm where the dairy's owners manage all aspects of the cheese making process, from managing the variety of wildflowers in the organic pastures to making certain the cheeses are aged at the right temperature.

The owners of the dairy, married dairy veterinarians, Drs. Meg Cattell and Arden Nelson have a unique background for making cheese at a raw milk dairy. Respected dairy veterinarians, they also hold degrees in environmental health, nutrition and anthropology. Meg has studied indigenous cultures' ancient relationships with cattle on research grants to Nepal and the Orkney Islands and to India on a Fulbright scholarship. She and Arden have also traveled the world lecturing and consulting with dairy farmers. When they purchased Windsor Dairy in 1999, they began to transform the farm into a dairy where they could put their unique expertise into practice and raise a family.

Meg and Arden have discovered that allowing cows to live like cows have lived for centuries results in the best animals husbandry and a creamy, sweet, nutritious milk. Windsor Dairy's cows are a mix of European mountain dairy breeds famed for cheese making, like Brown Swiss and Tarentaise. Like their ancestors, the cows spend most of the day grazing fields full of grasses, herbs and wildflowers. The cows' all grass diet results in a milk that is high in omega 3's, the kind of fatty acid found in salmon and walnut oil, and high in CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), a fatty acid that has high cancer fighting properties. Because the milk is un-pasteurized the milk's enzymes and vitamins remain intact when the milk enters the cheese-making vat.

The dairy's small batch cheese making vat is housed in a room adjacent to the milking parlor. In the traditional manner, cheese-making begins when the cows are milked, so the culture and the rennet can be added while the milk is still the body temperature of the cows. The curds are hand pressed into twenty pound or two pound cheese molds and then placed in aging rooms where they are aged a minimum of sixty days. After sixty days, by federal law, raw milk cheeses are available to the general public without a raw milk share.
Delicious cheese is the happy result of the careful attention to nuances of cow health and cheese making. Currently Windsor Dairy has nine varieties of cheese in production. Though some of the cheeses are made in "Swiss," "cheddar," and "jack" styles, the cheeses are named for geographic features along the dairy's watersheds, names like Glendevey, Buckhorn, and Nakhu, and reflect the dairy's commitment to environmental stewardship, local food and tradition. (Historically cheeses are named after the region they are made in. For example, Emmental from Switzerland and Stilton from England.) Many of the cheeses are true Colorado creations, like Buckhorn which has both jack and yogurt cultures and a natural or "mold" rind, Glendevey, a gruyere cheese aged with a natural rind, and Melville is a gouda-like cheese with a natural rind washed in organic apple cider from Meg's organic heirloom apple orchard.

 

These unique and delicious cheeses are only available from Windsor Dairy.