Photo via Seven Acre Dairy Company
Paoli Brand Butter mural
Entrepreneur and foodie enthusiast Nic Mink has long been enamored with the shopping, dining and outdoor recreation opportunities in the town of Paoli, Wis., located within a half-hour of Madison. When the opportunity presented to buy and restore a historic 25,000 square-foot dairy plant in Paoli, Mink was intrigued by the possibility to revive butter production in the town.
That opportunity blossomed into Seven Acre Dairy Company (6858 Paoli Road, Belleville), an endeavor that features the Dairy Café, with coffee and ice cream; The Kitchen, a farm-to-table restaurant; and a boutique hotel. Also within the building is a small butter plant, Paoli Brand Creamery Butter, operated by Anna Landmark and Anna Thomas Bates of neighboring Landmark Creamery.
“It was an exciting opportunity, and we wanted to restore the creamy and bring dairy production back to the site. We worked with Landmark Creamery to install and build a micro-dairy,” says Mink, who was a co-founder of Sitka Salmon Shares wild seafood co-op. (Mink is no longer involved with that company.)
The plant was built in 1888 by a group of local dairy farmers. Multiple dairy farmers had used the plant over the years for cheese and butter production. The plant closed in 1980 due to consolidation of the dairy industry. For the next four decades, the space was leased by artists. Mink was among a group of local entrepreneurs who bought the property in 2021.
Seven Acre Dairy Company logo
Seven Acre Dairy Company opened February 2023. Landmark and Thomas Bates lease the space to make slow-churned artisan butter for Seven Acre’s café and kitchen, and for their own Landmark Creamery label.
Producing Slow-Churned, Artisan Butter
Landmark was in the process of getting her cheesemaker’s license through the state of Wisconsin when she met Thomas Bates, a food writer, through local potlucks. Landmark was interested in starting a cheesemaking business. The women became friends and decided to go into business together. They formally launched Landmark Creamery over the 2013-2014 winter season.
“Our specialty is sheep’s milk cheeses. We thought that was a good niche in this cow-heavy dairy state,” says Landmark. “Sheep’s milk is delicious and not very common. We also want to support some burgeoning sheep dairies.”
Landmark has since added some cow’s milk cheeses. The butter is one of the newest products launched within the last year. “That came out of conversations with Nic about what products we could potentially make in his old cheese factory. Cheese needs a lot of space, but we could do butter on a small scale and bring in cans of cream for churning.”
Wisconsin is one of the only states that requires a buttermaker’s license. Landmark and Thomas Bates took classes through the Center for Dairy Research, an arm of UW-Madison’s College of Agricultural & Life Sciences. It took Landmark about six months to complete training and get a buttermaker’s license through the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.
“It was a great education tool,” Landmark reflects. An eye-opening moment for her was learning how differently cream acts versus milk, and how cream responds differently to different temperatures and agitation.
They currently use cream from cow’s milk for their butter. While sheep’s milk can also be used for buttermaking, they currently don’t have the infrastructure in place at Paoli Brand Creamery Butter but hope to add that at some point. Landmark’s hand-churned butter has a complex flavor; standard grocery store butters contain about 80% butter fat, Landmark says, but theirs contain 83 to 86% butterfat. “We’re able to capture a lot more butterfat in our process, which is similar to European butters like Kerrygold.”
In addition, Landmark adds some cultures that are similar to cheesemaking. They also temper the butter, giving it time for the flavors to mature. They get some cream from cheese plants that have separated the cream from the whey, so it carries a hint of cheese flavor. “It’s not outright cheese, but you get a little bit of that culture, that cheesy flavor in the butter,” Landmark says.
In addition to Seven Acre Dairy, the butter is also available at Landmark Creamery’s shop (6895 Paoli Road, Belleville) and online at landmarkcreamery.com; they ship nationwide. It can also be found at Meat People Butcher and Fromagination, in Madison. Landmark says they’re working on wider distribution.
Mink envisions the building and the Paoli landscape as an inclusive space for everyone to appreciate the nature, history, food and agriculture of the Paoli area. “I think we’re just scratching the surface of what happening here at Seven Acres. It will grow over the next few years.”
For more information, visit sevenacredairyco.com.
