The Barre Montpelier Times Argus
Consider Bardwell ... is back
By Sarah Galbraith Correspondent
Jun 12, 2021
After a few setbacks in recent years, a beloved Vermont cheesemaker is producing and selling cheese once again.
If you’re perusing the West River Farmers Market in Londonderry this Saturday, you will notice a new vendor among the tables of produce and crafts: Consider Bardwell, of West Pawlet, is back to making cheese. They are returning, this weekend, to one of Vermont’s oldest farmers’ markets for the first time in several years.
Imagine these flavors in your mouth: The Pawlet is a cheese crafted with raw milk and aged at least three months. It has a mildly sweet taste that is creamy and nutty, with bright grassy notes that give the cheese a true taste of place. The Dorset is a pasteurized washed-rind cheese that is buttery and earthy beneath an orange-hued exterior. The Rupert is a raw milk, Alpine-style cheese that is aged beyond its usual 12 months, and a bite reveals a golden paste yielding a rich complexity of flavor with toasty and buttery notes and a hint of sharpness, similar to Comté or Gruyère. Rounding out the offerings is Wookey Wells Cheddar, made with goat and cow milk in collaboration with Vermont’s Grafton Village Cheese. It is aged at Consider Bardwell for a minimum of 12 months, and this crumbly yet creamy wheel offers characteristic nutty flavors, a taste of meaty mushrooms and hints of citrus.
If you can’t make it to the market this weekend, Consider Bardwell’s cheeses have recently been added to several Vermont retailers via Provisions International, a food distributor based in White River Junction. Their cheeses are now on the shelves at Dorset Union Store and Mach’s Market in Pawlet, for example.
“If I want any cheese from Vermont, I go (to Mach’s),” says Angela Miller, who is the owner and farmer, along with her husband, at Consider Bardwell. “They have everybody from Jasper Hill to Lazy Lady, they have everything.”
Miller and her husband bought Consider Bardwell in 2000, carrying forward the history of Vermont’s first cheesemaking cooperative, which was founded in 1863 and named for the founder. Cheese had always been Miller’s passion and for a time before buying the farm, her plan was to open a cheese shop in New York City. But without the funds to do it, she turned to her second passion, books and worked for several years as an editor.
She came to farming with a focus on supporting other farms, in particular by buying milk from farms in the area to use in her cheeses.
“So many farms go out of business, we thought we would work with local farms to purchase their milk at a fair price. We would do our best to keep a few people farming,” she said.
She had her own goat herd, but also bought raw goat and cow milk from nearby farms. That worked for 15 years, and Consider Bardwell became known nationally for their high-quality cheeses. They even started to expand to the West Coast, and at that time, says Miller, orders were coming in faster than they could keep up with them.
To keep up with demand, Consider Bardwell brought in more goat milk from more farms, and that’s where the first setback happened: a listeria outbreak, caused by bacteria brought in from a local goat farm’s milk, contaminated an entire batch of cheeses, as well as every cheese that had been near the infected batch.
Consider Bardwell took all the right actions: They notified the Food and Drug Administration, recalled all of their product, and shut down all sales. In all, the small cheesemaker threw away $200,000 worth of cheese.
“We literally ran out of money,” says Miller about the two-month period they were closed to deal with the outbreak. All 15 of her employees found work elsewhere. Then, Miller began reconfiguring and put her sights on reopening in March 2020, but the pandemic delivered the second setback.
Now, Consider Bardwell is slowly making its way back on to our cheese plates. Looking back, Miller can appreciate how this break gave her time to think. She wrote a five-year business plan that calls for less cheese and more local retail. And they’re watching their pennies too, she says.
Personally, the setbacks gave Miller a chance to reassess her own approach to her work, as well.
“I realized I was trapped in a treadmill that I couldn’t slow down,” she says of the fast-paced, fast-growing business she ran before the shutdown. “That kind of feeling makes one desperate.”
She says with some introspective work she’s gotten grounded and set her intentions, and now she’s ramping things up again, just more slowly this time.
At West River Farmers Market, coordinator Lauren Ingersoll is happy to have the artisan cheesemaker back as a vendor this year. And it’s a good year to be there: Overall, the energy around the market is exciting, she says, as the state starts to open back up and people can be at the market in person again this year.
When it comes to cheese, there are several local vendors at the Londonderry market, in addition to Consider Bardwell, including Woodcock Farm Cheese Co. in Weston, West River Creamery in Londonderry and Parish Hill Creamery in Putney. And that diversity is good for the market and also good for Vermont cheese, says Ingersoll.
“Cheese is such a Vermont product,” says Lauren. “When you go to a farmers market, you expect there will be cheese there. It’s a Vermont staple.”
Consider Bardwell will be among this year’s offerings, as well as back on the shelves of local retailers, thanks to Miller’s hard work and the support of working lands and dairy grants. Plus, says Miller, “The support of friends, family, Vermont and the Vermont cheese community has been instrumental.”
Chocolate and cheese: Do you like cheese? And chocolate? A collaboration between Consider Bardwell and Tavernier in Brattleboro are putting the two together in the most decadent fashion. Dorset cheese is paired with a chocolate “soppressata” log that is made with fermented black garlic, chili, black pepper flakes and sliced almonds. And Pawlet cheese is paired with a chocolate ganache “mortadella” that is loaded with cardamom shortbread, dried medjool dates and pistachios. Visit www.considerbardwellfarm.com online where both can be purchased, along with many other products.
