28 SAVEUR.COM
THE SPLURGE
I
f you’ve never been in the presence of a day-old calf, they happen
to be disconcertingly large. Recently I followed one—the color
and size of a golden retriever—as it stumbled around Diane St.
Clair’s barn, bleating loudly. Rain pounded on the roof, my boots
were spattered with mud, and my neck ached after a five-hour drive.
But it hardly mattered. I’d come to this sparsely populated corner
of western Vermont to taste the country’s most sought-after butter.
In a tiny creamery just off the barn, St. Clair reached into a refrig-
erator and took out a pound of her product—four dandelion-yellow
balls in a large Ziploc bag. A former New Yorker with no experience
in food production, she began making butter almost by accident,
after buying a pair of Jersey cows. Wanting an expert opinion, she
mailed unsolicited samples to Thomas Keller; he called back to say
he wanted to buy all of it, and eventually asked her to acquire moreOh,
Butter!
PHOTOGRAPH BY MATT TAYLOR-GROSSA hunk of Diane St.
Clair’s prized Animal
Farm butter made
in Orwell, Vermont.ALEX HALBERSTADT
scores a bag of the
creamiest, most
coveted stuff on
earth and ponders
the question:
Is any butter worth
$50 a pound?