The Best Cheese in New England Came From a Vermont Creamery That Didn't Exist Three Years Ago
Vermont has more than 40 cheesemakers, and thirteen of them medaled.
Woodlawn Creamery’s Brimstone won Best in Show at the 2026 Northeast Gold Medal Cheese Competition, judged July 17 at the Eastern States Exposition in West Springfield, Massachusetts. Woodlawn’s Pawlet took Third Best in Show. Brimstone also took Best of Vermont.
Woodlawn sits in Pawlet, in Rutland County, on a dairy farm the Leach family has worked for seven generations. The creamery opened in 2024, when Seth and Kate Leach took over recipes from the closing Consider Bardwell operation — Pawlet and Rupert among them — and hired cheesemaker Leslie Goff Tyminski. Everything Woodlawn makes comes from its own herd.
Woodlawn entered six cheeses. All six medaled. Four took gold.
Vermont took half the medals
The Vermont Agency of Agriculture pointed to the results Friday. Counted out of the published scoresheet:
27 of the 49 gold medals awarded across all classes went to Vermont cheeses
61 of the 125 total class medals went to Vermont
Thirteen Vermont creameries appear by name in the results
Add the three special awards Woodlawn took on top of its class medals and Vermont’s total is 64 medals, 30 of them gold — the figure the Vermont Cheese Council published. The Council counts twelve creameries rather than thirteen, which reflects recent consolidation among makers.
Half the medals in a six-state field. Vermont has more than 40 cheesemakers, and thirteen of them medaled.
One name accounts for a large share of that. Cabot Creamery Cooperative took 18 of Vermont’s 61 class medals, 10 of them gold — cheddar, butter, yogurt, sour cream. Cabot is a farmer-owned cooperative with members across the Northeast, not a small artisan creamery. Nearly a third of Vermont’s haul came from the biggest dairy business in the state.
The competition itself is not a fair-week novelty. The Eastern States Exposition has run it since 2010. Entry costs $25 per cheese. Head judge John Greeley of Swampscott, Massachusetts, spent 15 years chairing the American Cheese Society’s judging committee, and eight other judges sat on this year’s panel. Winners are recognized September 26 at Farm-A-Rama during The Big E, and winning product is sold at the Eastern States Farmers Market on the fairgrounds for the run of the Fair.
The third one in twelve months
World Cheese Awards, Bern, Switzerland (November 2025) — 33 awards, including Super Golds for Jasper Hill’s Withersbrook Blue and Parish Hill’s West West Blue. Compass covered the results at the time.
American Cheese Society, Louisville (July 2026) — 15 Vermont cheesemakers, 54 ribbons, first-place Best in Show for Jasper Hill’s Winnimere. Every Vermont maker who entered won something.
Northeast Gold Medal Cheese Competition, West Springfield (July 2026) — 64 medals, 30 gold, Best in Show and Third Best in Show.
The middle one comes with an asterisk Compass reported in May: the Vermont Cheese Council reimburses its members’ entry fees for the American Cheese Society competition, up to a set amount, treating the cost as marketing rather than a producer expense. Cheesemakers in other states pay their own way. The reimbursement does not extend to the Big E, where Vermont makers entered on their own dime and still took half the medals.
Meanwhile
Vermont had 838 dairy farms in 2016. Vermont Farm Bureau put the count at 414 this spring — one farm in two, gone in a decade. Four Vermont dairy processing plants are scheduled to close this year. Three of them closed within two months this summer, which is what brought dozens of farmers to Grand Isle on July 2 for a meeting that was supposed to be about one plant and turned into a conversation about whether processors are leaving the state.
Those two facts are not in tension. Artisan cheese sells for what commodity milk never will, which is exactly why a seventh-generation dairy farm in Pawlet opened a creamery in 2024 rather than shipping more milk. It is a survival strategy, and for the Leach family it is working.
It is not, however, a fix for the sector. Thirteen creameries won medals. There are 414 farms.
What to watch
Vermont Cheese Week runs September 13 through 20, and the Vermont Cheesemakers Festival lands at Shelburne Farms on September 20. The Big E awards ceremony is September 26. Between now and then, the state’s dairy processing map will likely have changed again.
Watch whether those September events get framed as a celebration or as a case for policy. The Cheese Council has spent a year assembling the best argument anyone has made for Vermont dairy, and the Legislature reconvenes in January with a processing crisis on its desk.