Dawn, and not a particularly rosy one, at that. It is, in fact, a gray and drizzly morning in Grafton, rain dripping dismally from sodden eaves, ground fog drifting ghost-like over drenched fields. But just down the Townshend Road, light spills cheerfully from the windows of a pristine white frame building. And inside, Scott Fletcher is smiling.

Never mind the early hour or the nasty weather; Fletcher likes his work. He is part artist, part artisan; part chemist, part muscle man. He works by rote, but also by instinct. He is a member of an ancient and honorable fraternity. He is a cheesemaker.

A 26-year veteran at the prize-winning Grafton Village Cheese Company, Fletcher made his first batch of Cheddar in 1966, which puts him in the vanguard of an ever-increasing band of Vermonters devoted to old-fashioned, hands-on production of premium cheeses. Thanks to its many dairy farms, Vermont has long been active in cheese production; today the state's large-scale manufacturers are mass-producing cheese in mind-boggling amounts. Last year, Middlebury's Kraft plant churned out some 17 million pounds of the stuff; the once famously small-scale Cabot Creamery Cooperative produced an additional 17 million; and in Hinesburg, International Cheese made an astounding 70 million pounds of cheese. But Fletcher and his confreres, supported by a booming specialty foods market, are after something else: not the most cheese, but the best.

The best cheese, most will insist, is made the old-fashioned way: in small batches, by hand. While assembly-line processing and the use of modern machinery may boost volume, something of incalculable value seems to be lost along the way. Says Peter Mohn, vice president for sales at the Grafton Village Cheese Company, "The cheesemaker is an artist; his medium is flavor. When you take the cheesemaker out, you take the art out."

And art isn't easy. Amiable, informative, a fount of anecdotal charm, Scott Fletcher is nonetheless busy His day begins before first light as some 2,500 gallons of raw milk-Jersey milk, almost universally preferred by specialty cheesemakers-are pumped from the enormous refrigerated holding tank built right into the side of the factory building. Waiting to receive the milk are two rectangular steel vats set on either side of the immaculate, tile-floored production room; they are separated by a room-length cheese press packed with yesterday's product: 55 metal boxes-cheese hoops-each containing a 40-pound block of fresh, buttery yellow Cheddar.

As the hoops are unpacked and the blocks of cheese wrapped and borne away to the cooler for aging, milk plummets into the vats, fillings the room with the warm, rich, heavy scent of butterfat. Now Fletcher springs into action, adding cultures and rennet, operating the paddles that stir the vats, checking the mixture's temperature like an anxious parent. It takes about 30 minutes for the rennet (once derived from calf stomach-lining, rennet is now available in a "microbial" version that Grafton uses exclusively, making its cheese vegetarian-approved) to set the milk, which begins to look thick and custardy; when Fletcher judges that the time is right, he and fellow cheesemaker Kevin Bush pull a large metal screen-a curd knife-through the milk mixture, first along its length, then back and forth from side to side, producing a vatful of creamy curds.

Steam is now pumped into the sides of the vat, slowly heating the contents to a temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The curds must be cooked, but not pasteurized; the creamy, non-bitter flavor of raw milk is an essential part of the finished Cheddar. A little tense now, Fletcher keeps a steady eye on his temperature gauges; at the same time, he squeegees the sides of the vats, hoses down the room, scrubs and stacks hoops. Constant and meticulous cleaning appears to be a part of the cheesemaking process; it goes on, regularly and reassuringly, throughout the morning.

As the room fills with steam and the nursery odor of hot milk, the lumpy curds begin to separate from the liquid whey. Again and again, Fletcher stirs the curds and, grabbing one, flings it to the floor. When the curds are ready, he says, they will bounce. Sure enough, a few moments later, he hands a curd to a visitor, who throws it to the tiles and screeches in delight as it bounces like a hailstone. Now the taste test, and suddenly Miss Muffet becomes comprehensible: the curds are lovely, sweet and mild.

As the whey is gradually pumped out of the vats (to be recycled, some fed to young cattle and pigs, some spread as fertilizer on local fields), Fletcher gets to work with his curd rake, evening out the level of curds beneath the steadily falling opaque yellow lake of whey. When the curds are evenly spread, he makes a trench down the middle of the vat, raking the curds to either side; whey runs like a river between these two quivering banks of curds, which are repeatedly pressed by Fletcher's rake to release more end more of their load of whey.

All the while, the cheesemaker keeps checking time, temperature and, now particularly, acidity. Ducking quickly into the production room's tiny adjacent office, Fletcher repeatedly performs the same simple chemical test that will tell him when his curds have reached an ideal level of acidity: somewhere between 50 and 60 percent. Some cultures bring the acidity on more swiftly; others work more slowly. But whatever culture is used, the proper level of acidity can only be achieved through the back-breaking process of cheddaring.

The two enormous banks of curds in each vat are sliced into fat slabs with a long-handled, two-pronged knife. Then the thick, spongy, heavy slabs are turned, again and again, entirely by hand. This is good old-fashioned labor; observing it, you begin to understand why every cheesemaker worth his or her salt is possessed of admirably muscular arms. As the turning process-the cheddaring-continues, more whey is pressed out of the slabs, their texture becomes less curdy and more smooth, their acidity gradually rises, and the smell in the room becomes less milky, less sweet, sourer.

Once they have attained ideal acidity, the slabs arc fed by hand through a lethal-looking milling device, which chops them into chunks and strips. Now Fletcher hovers over the vats "feeding the chickens," he grins, as he reaches into a bucket and tosses handfuls of salt over the waiting bits of young cheese. The salt serves as drying agent, preservative and flavoring; other flavorings-Grafton makes sage, dill and a relatively new garlic Cheddar in addition to its regular and extra-sharp versions-would also be added at this point.

More tastes are offered; the fresh strips of cheese are warm and delicious, with a rubbery texture, squeaking against the teeth with each bite. In fact, the cheese is, at this point, referred to as "squeak" and considered a delicacy by those in the know. The squeak is stirred with paddles and turned with what looks like a big snow shovel; "We're always shoveling snow or raking leaves." Fletcher remarks.

And now the end is nigh. The chunks of cheese, still draining whey, are formed and tamped into two long piles in each vat, then shoveled into the hoops, which are individually weighed and covered. This difficult procedure is rapidly accomplished by Fletcher and Bush, who work in hypnotically rhythmic tandem. "Fifteen minutes," Bush informs Fletcher, who grimaces: "We can do it in ten."

The hoops are laid out in the hydraulic press, where they will be compressed and drained overnight under 40 pounds of pressure. And that's it, except for the cleanup: "the hard part," laughs Fletcher. It's lunchtime; Fletcher and Bush have spent a long hard morning turning their 2,500 gallons of milk into about 2,200 pounds of cheese that, after proper aging (up to two years in the case of Grafton's Extra Sharp Classic Reserve Cheddar), will go on to be sold nationwide, to be served everywhere from Disney World to the White House and to win a host of awards including, most recently, Outstanding Cheese or Dairy Product at the 39th International Fancy Food and Confection Show. Pretty heady stuff; but Fletcher shrugs modestly. "It's real work", he says. [...]

This article originally appeared in Vermont Magazine. ^© Julie Kirgo