Better Butter

A soaring global demand combined with a 40-year peak in U.S. butter consumption pushed retail butter prices to record highs this year, proving the old adage that “everything is better with butter” may be the new slogan for Wisconsin buttermakers.

While all dairy prices tend to be cyclical, ebbing and flowing as demand and supply fluctuate, butter prices generally trend on a three-year cycle, says Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin Madison. With a pound of butter reaching $5 in many Wisconsin supermarkets this fall, compared to just $3 last year, consumers have likely seen the peak of the latest cycle, he says.

For specialty buttermakers, 2014 was a banner year. With commodity butter fetching record demand, the market for farmstead, hand-packed and hand-rolled butter grew at an equal pace. But while prices for commodity butter have steadily fallen since peaking in September, the prices for specialty butter have stayed consistently higher. That’s because extra labor in churning and hand-packing farmstead butter push costs higher than the perfectly-machine-formed quarter-pound stick you’ll find on the average grocery store shelf.

With only about a dozen butter manufacturers in Wisconsin— compared to more than 125 cheese factories—locating specialty butter is a bit more difficult than specialty cheese. Visit any natural food cooperative, specialty food store or upscale supermarket, however, and you’re likely to find butter from Organic Valley, whether it be cultured, salted, European-style or pastured. In fact, Organic Valley introduced the first nationally available certified organic butter in the United States, and its culutred, salted Pasture Butter is made seasonally in small batches in Chaseburg, Wisconsin, only at the height of pasture season from May to September.

On the farmstead side, an increasingly well-known Wisconsin butter comes from Nordic Creamery. Owners Al and Sarah Bekkum churn and hand-pack specialty butters at their farmstead operation near Westby. With their six children, the Bekkums live on a Norwegianhomesteaded farm, which has been in their family since 1917 and is adjacent to several other Norwegian-heritage neighbors. Situated among the rolling hills of the Coulee region (a French term describing the region’s narrow ridges separated by steep-sided valleys), the area is known for exceptionally fertile soil and lush pastures, which the Bekkums say help their cows produce milk that makes their butter second to none.

An award-winning cheesemaker, Al Bekkum is also a licensed buttermaker—one of only about 40 in the state—and has made butter for years. In fact, at the 2011 U.S. Championship Cheese Contest, he took second, third and fourth places in the Goat’s, Sheep’s and Mixed Milk Butter category with his Nordic Creamery blended milk and goat butters.

Today the Bekkums craft several types of farmstead butter, including Cultured Butter with Sea Salt, which unlike most butter, is made with live cultures similar to cheesemaking. They also make Summer Butter, churned only when cows are on pasture, as well as Harvest Butter, crafted in fall, winter and spring. A line of flavored butters also prove popular, including their Maple Syrup, Cinnamon-Sugar, Garlic, Basil, and Pepper flavored butters. Nordic Creamery is one of the few manufacturers in the country of Goat Butter, available at specialty retail stores across the nation, as well as at its own farmstead retail store, built in 2011 and open to the public year round.

“From the get-go, people went crazy for it,” Al says. “They want a fresh butter that’s hand-packed, and they buy it like there’s no tomorrow.”

If you can’t find Nordic Creamery specialty butters, you’re likely to find Hand-Rolled butter from Alcam Creamery in Richland Center. For more than 40 years, this Wisconsin company has crafted hand-rolled butter that is never pumped, just churned and literally rolled by hand into logs, then wrapped in paper.

You might find Alcam’s specialty butter under “Amish Butter” or “Hand-Rolled” butter, or even under a handful of private label company names, but rest assured it is made in Wisconsin and rolled by one or two workers whose sole job is to create butter that tastes like what your grandma used to make. It’s generally available in either salted or unsalted varieties.

Alcam’s Jason Schultz, vice president of operations, says the company's continuous production of hand-rolled butter, in addition to its more commodity-style butters, is a testament to the loyalty of its customers. "Over the years, our mix of products has grown from bulk boxes of salted butter to a wide assortment of sizes and shapes for retail, food service and ingredient customers. Butter is what we do and we do it well," Jason says. "We like to say, it's the butter with taste."

Finally, new to the specialty butter scene is PastureLand, a small Wisconsin grass-based dairy cooperative which purchased its brand name from a former cooperative in Minnesota that made pasture-grazed butter for years. Capitalizing on that name recognition, the Wisconsin farmer group launched PastureLand Butter this summer.

PastureLand Butter is made in small batches and available from April to November in both unsalted and sea salt styles. So far, it’s for sale at a select few food cooperatives in Wisconsin and the upper Midwest, but it is likely to grow to more retail markets in 2015, due to surging demand. PastureLand also makes yogurt from the milk of pastured cows and is working on launching a grass-based cheese. The cooperative is composed of a handful of dairy farmers located in southwest Wisconsin.

“People are looking for products with genuine ingredient labels. They are tired of artificial ingredients and spreads made from vegetable oil,” says Bert Paris, a dairy farmer with PastureLand Cooperative. “Pure, wholesome specialty butter fits that bill perfectly.”