ARTISAN CULTURED BUTTER

Artisan Unsalted Butter 
Ploughgate Creamery, Vermont 
One 8 oz block 

Ploughgate Creamery cultured butter is made from fresh Vermont cream sourced from the Monument Dairy in Weybridge, Vermont. The cream is cultured for 24 hours before being churned, giving the butter a distinct tangy and nutty flavor. The butter is then kneaded by hand to expel more moisture. The sweetness of the cream shines through, creating an elegant and balanced unsalted butter! Each block of butter weighs in at 1/2 lb.

Thanks to an incredible program by the Vermont Land Trust in which young farmers compete to win the right to purchase a farm that has been conserved with the purpose of keeping the land in agriculture, butter maker Marisa Mauro was able to purchase the historic Bragg Farm and open her business Ploughgate Creamery on its land. Marisa's commitment to stewarding this historic farm is a true inspiration!

Heritage Foods is expanding our dairy selections in partnership with the Anne Saxelby Legacy Fund (ASLF), whose mission is to provide monthlong paid apprenticeships for young adults to live on sustainable farms — to work, learn, and be inspired to create change in their communities. We have selected our favorite domestically produced cheeses from ASLF partner farms for pairing with Heritage meats!

What is cultured butter?
In short, it's butter made in the European style by adding live active cultures to cream before churning, similar to cheese or yogurt.

Cultured butter is tangier and richer than your everyday stick butter, with a taste reminiscent of cheese. That’s because cultured butter and cheese share a critical first step – the addition of beneficial live bacteria (the ‘culture’ in cultured butter). All Ploughgate Creamery butter begins as pasteurized cream from 4th generation local farm Monument Farms Dairy.

How is Ploughgate butter made? 
To begin the butter-making process, Marisa adds active cultures to the cream and lets it sit for 24 hours. This imparts complexity to the aroma, flavor, and texture of the finished product. After two days it’s time to churn. Gratefully the days of hand churning are long gone, and Marisa’s industrial churn does the work of separating the pale yellow butterfat from the frothy buttermilk. A drain on the underbelly of the churn releases the buttermilk into a five-gallon bucket. A mason jar’s worth is saved to make salad dressings; the rest is fed to Marisa’s pigs. Finally Marisa wraps the butter by hand into tidy one-pound packages. The end result is nutty, grassy, and sweet – simply divine.

More about Ploughgate Creamery: 
Thanks to an incredible program by the Vermont Land Trust in which young farmers compete to win the right to purchase a farm that has been conserved with the purpose of keeping the land for agriculture, butter maker Marisa Mauro was able to purchase the historic Bragg Farm in 2013 and has been crafting small-batch, cultured butter since 2014.