Maple syrup, it says on the brochures, is Vermont’s official flavor! True enough – after all who could argue that the Green Mountain State’s climate isn’t ideal for tsunamis of sap to flow every March? However, with its many small organic farms plus many artisan cheese makers, bakers, specialty food producers and farmer’s markets, the true taste test of Southern Vermont just might be a year-round smorgasbord of homegrown flavors and sophisticated eating.

The word “artisan” is suddenly popping up on everything from bread wrappers to salad dressing labels. Shoppers see it on baskets of fresh tomatoes, on jars of apple chutney and on packets of ground spices.

The implication is that good food is an art form; it is meant to specify that certain foods are “crafted” by hand or made using traditional recipes. However, it takes a lot more than a folksy looking label to be able to call a food product artisan. To be legitimate, the food must make a statement about where it comes from and who grows or produces it.

Such a statement is loud and clear in the cheeses produced at Peaked Mountain Farm in Townshend. On a road that winds up a hillside above the village center, Bob and Ann Works and their helpers annually produce about 1,500 pounds raw sheep milk cheeses, as well as cow and mixed milk varieties.

Because their sheep graze on wild grasses, including plants such as wild mint and thyme in the meadows, their feta, Camembert and tomme cheeses cannot help but have the flavor of Vermont in every bite.

If you tour the farm’s cheese room and then drive home on the back road, don’t be surprised to see 50 or 60 buffalo grazing a few fields over at Carl and Eloise Steiner’s East Hill Bison Farm. Their packaged cuts of inspected, low-fat, low-cholesterol meat are sold at the farmhouse. Buffalo entrees are also on the menu at some local eateries, including Townshends’s Dam Diner on Route 30.

Sticking to the state’s illustrious “Cheese Trail,” a tourism brainchild of the Vermont Cheese Council, leads hungry travelers to five more cheese makers situated in the southeastern corner of the state. Look at the map to find Vermont Shepherd at the Major Farm on Patch Road in Putney. Cheese makers David and Cindy Major are credited with jump-starting widespread appreciation for specialty sheep’s milk cheeses made in Vermont over a decade ago.

Patience is a common ingredient in all artisan products. If you have never tasted their signature cheese, expect to experience a rich creamy texture with an earthy flavor. No matter where you buy Major Farm’s Vermont Shepherd – in local stores or in California, Michigan or Tennessee - eventually, it, too, will be something your memory will hold onto forever as “tasting like Vermont.” 

Few foods in Southern Vermont are more convincingly artisan than bread made by hand. Few bakers are as dedicated to the creative potential of each and every loaf as those at the spiritual community living at the 120-acre Basin Farm on Basin Farm Road in Bellows Falls.

Typically, breadbaking starts with “preheat oven.” Their recipe starts months before in the farm’s certified organic fields. They sow about 5 acres of organic spelt annually. They do the tilling, watering, weeding and harvesting of the grain, and some 1,600 bushels is eventually ground into flour.

These are just a few of the many fine food producers in Southern Vermont who can say they make Vermont artisan products.