Some Vermont businesses are old. Grafton Village Cheese is something rarer: old and still doing it by hand. One of Vermont's legacy cheesemakers, it has been turning raw milk into cheddar in the Green Mountains since 1892, and today you can taste the whole story just off Route 103 in Proctorsville — minutes from Ludlow and Okemo — where its Okemo Valley retail store carries the full lineup plus cheeses, wines, and gourmet goods from Vermont and around the world.
What the company is today is a study in doing one thing exceptionally well. At the original creamery in Grafton, cheesemakers still handcraft raw-milk, naturally aged cheeses in the Grafton Village tradition — a creamy, smooth flavor the company says you won't find in mass-produced cheese. The lineup runs in three families: the Grafton Village classics (the traditional cheddars in blocks, bars, and wheels), Tavern Select (premium wedges made in partnership with The Old Tavern at Grafton), and the Cave Aged line of small-batch raw-milk cheeses matured in Grafton's own aging caves.
The cheddars are the heart of it. The flagship is the 2 Year Aged Cheddar — firm, complex, and the block people drive out of their way for — and the range stretches from younger 1 Year cheddar through 3 and 4 Year wheels, plus the beloved Maple Smoked Cheddar and a seasonal Sage & Garlic. The current shop shelves also hold Clothbound Cheddar, Shepsog, Storyteller, Bear Hill, Smoked Chili Cheddar, and Truffle Cheddar, so there is a wedge for every kind of cheese lover, from the purist to the adventurer.
The Cave Aged line is where the cheesemakers get to show off. These are small-batch raw-milk cheeses — cow's, sheep's, and mixed milk — finished in the caves at Grafton: Clothbound Cheddar, Bismark, Truffled Bismark, Vermont Leyden, Barn Dance, Naked Cheddar, Red Vask, Shepsog, and Bear Hill among them. The awards case backs up the ambition. At the 2024 American Cheese Society competition, Shepsog took first place in its cheddar category and Storyteller took second, and at The Big E the company brought home golds for Bismark and Vermont Barn Dance, a silver for Maple Smoked, and a bronze for the Two Year.
The secret is less a secret than a commitment. The cheese starts with raw, unpasteurized milk from family farms, and it is made the slow way — the cheddaring process, where curds are cut, stacked, and milled by hand in the vat, exactly as generations of Vermont cheesemakers have done it. The company credits head cheesemaker Mariano Gonzalez and the creamery crew with keeping that tradition exacting and alive, batch after batch.
The history starts in 1892, when dairy farmers in Grafton formed the Grafton Cooperative Cheese Company to turn their surplus raw milk into cheese. In 1912 a fire destroyed the original factory, and the story could have ended there. Instead, a few decades later, the nonprofit Windham Foundation — founded by Dean Mathey, a New York financier who summered in Grafton — restored the company in the mid-1960s. As the company's own history puts it, a new era for the cheese company and the town was born.
The decades since have been about growing without losing the plot. In 2008 the company opened a production plant and retail store in Brattleboro, bringing Grafton cheddar to the Connecticut River valley. That chapter closed when the building was sold to Retreat Farm in late 2022 and the lease ended; in March 2024 the company announced the retail store was moving to the Okemo Valley — to Proctorsville, where it now anchors Route 103 with tasting, cheese, and gifts.
Then came the biggest change in sixty years. In October 2024 the Windham Foundation announced it was seeking a buyer or partner for the cheese company, and on April 14, 2025, Grafton Village Cheese was sold to Vermont Farmstead Cheese Company of South Woodstock. The terms weren't disclosed, but the promises were public: cheesemaking stays in Grafton, packing, shipping, cheese-smoking, and retail stay in Proctorsville, the brands keep their names, and the roughly two dozen employees — including the cheesemakers — came along for the new chapter. New owner Kent Underwood set a target of 15 percent growth for Grafton over the following 18 months, with better logistics and sales while keeping everything handmade.
What's next reads like a company leaning into its roots. The homepage currently announces a new retail store coming soon in Windsor, developed together with Vermont Farmstead Cheese Company. Online ordering now runs through Dakin Farm's website, putting Grafton cheddar a click away for fans far from Vermont. And in a 2026 "Made in Vermont" television feature, the new owners were clear about the philosophy: operational efficiencies, yes; automation replacing the handmade process, no. The best way to understand all of this is to visit. The Proctorsville store at 2568 VT-103 stocks the full Grafton lineup — cheddars, Tavern Select wedges, the Cave Aged specialties — alongside curated cheeses from Vermont and abroad, wine, gourmet foods, and artisan gifts. The creamery itself sits at 533 Townshend Road in the village of Grafton, one of Vermont's prettiest preserved villages, and makes a perfect anchor for a slow afternoon of wandering. If you want to stretch the cheese run into a full day outside, the Green Mountain Club's Day Hiker's Guide to Vermont catalogs more than 200 day hikes across the state — fine company for exploring the back roads of the Okemo Valley before heading home with a cooler full of cheddar.
One hundred thirty-four years in, Grafton Village Cheese remains what a fire, a foundation, and a new generation of owners each refused to let disappear: a working piece of Vermont's dairy heritage, still made by hand in the Green Mountains. See the full page on Green Mountain Guide: Grafton Village Cheese.