Little things like butter make life worth living. A little butter is a wonderful thing, whether it’s the real thing or a plant-based version of it.
At the World Championship Cheese Contest in Wisconsin earlier this month, a cheap butter from the U.S. was named the best, beating out well-known European creameries to win the title.
The brand is Cabot, which is made by a group of dairy farmers in Vermont. If you know your dairy, you know the name. One of their partner farms in Massachusetts made the extra creamy sea salty butter that won the award for best salted butter. It got a score of 99.65, which is very high.
An old brand from Normandy, France, called Isigny Sainte-Mère made salted butter that was just barely better than Cabot Extra Creamy. The judges gave that butter a score of 99.6.
Still, keep this in mind: a half-pound of Cabot Extra Creamy Sea Salted Butter costs around $4. The Isigny of Sainte-Mère? It costs $11.99 for 8.8 ounces.
The Cheese Contest judges (no, butter isn’t cheese, but let’s move on) rate each item on its taste, saltiness, color, texture, finish, and package.
Each item starts with 100 points, but judges take points away based on problems they see. In that case, the Cabot Extra Creamy was very close to being perfect, and it won the best in its class.
This year, Cabot also had another salted butter in the top three, and a different form of the Extra Creamy Sea Salted won a bronze medal.
When it came to unsalted butter, names from Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark, and France did better than Cabot. Another New England brand, Vermont Creamery, came in second.
But it doesn’t matter! This is the butter we use for our toast in the morning, our baguette, and our fresh banana bread. People like Cabot’s work, and he won.
Their gold medal will stay with them until the 2026 World Championship Cheese Contest. By then, I hope to have figured out how to sneak in and take the samples without being seen.