Winter vs Summer Cheese

Our friend here has special eyelashes, from two different batches of Savage. You may notice the left lashes are lighter in color than the right lashes. What accounts for the color differences between these two batches?

The Savage on the left side is Winter cheese, made when our cows are happily munching on hay in the winter months. The cheese on the right side was the first batch of Savage made after the cows went out to pasture in the late spring and started consuming fresh grass rich in beta carotene, a fat-soluble antioxidant derived from the Latin name for carrot.

Carotenes produce the yellow and orange color found in fruits and vegetables and are converted to vitamin A by the body (University of Maryland Medicine, 2002). Our cows consume the grass and convert it to energy and milk, milk takes on a creamier, orangey hue which is then passed along to the cheese!

Cutting into one of these wheels when there is still snow outside is like looking into a time capsule, and reminds us that spring and summer are never that far away!