The butter that changed everything for me was that of Jean-Yves Bordier. A knob of marigold yellow, it had a depth and richness that I had never encountered before in butter. Which might have explained why it earned pride of place on a cheese plate at the Parisian wine bar where I first discovered it. Presented in this context, butter ceased to be a condiment or an ingredient but the main event, something to be savored just as one would savor a fine cheese. This was an entirely new idea.

Butter has a unique advantage over cheese. The word “terroir” is often invoked in discussions of artisan cheese — the idea that a food from a specific place can transmit the particularities of a certain geography. Without question, milk has the potential to express this nuance, but it is so adulterated and transformed by the process of cheesemaking — the cultures, the molds, the salt, the aging and affinage — that the subtle variance in flavor as it changes over a season is muddled and difficult if not impossible to discern. Butter, on the other hand, is simply a concentrated distillation of the milk. If left uncultured and unsalted, the only other inputs besides milk are the water it is washed with before kneading. In this way, butter has a more potent capacity to represent the two most important facets of “terroir”: the stage of the animal’s lactation and the things that she is eating.

I hope to highlight this subtlety by creating a line of unadorned seasonal butters that are available for consumption as close to when the goats are milked as is possible. That way, the consumer has a chance to truly connect the dots between the beautiful slab of butter they unwrap, the marvelous creature who produced it and the unique landscape where she spends her days converting the wild plants and carefully selected nutrients that make up her diet into beautiful milk.

In time, there will also be a line of compound butters that serve to further highlight the seasonality of the milk’s flavors, incorporating a thoughtful blend of wild edible plants that the goats are eating in spring, summer and fall.

Butter is currently being made in small quantities upon request. If you would like to place an order, please email me directly at lauren@villavillekullafarm.com. Butter comes in 4oz ingots for $20 not including shipping.