Cheese Grotto Exclusive: Parish Hill Creamery | Suffolk Punch

Suffolk Punch is handcrafted by Parish Hill Creamery, a small family creamery in Westminster West, Vermont, founded in 2013 by cheesemaker Peter Dixon and his wife, Rachel Fritz Schaal.



Suffolk Punch is a whole milk, pasta filata cheese made in the Caciocavallo tradition and formed entirely by hand. The curd is hand-stretched into its signature gourd shape, then tied and hung to age. Young wheels have a firm, smooth interior; as Suffolk Punch ages, the texture shifts, becoming flakier and drier. The flavor follows a similar arc — buttery and tangy in its youth, developing a noticeable peppery edge in wheels aged past six months.

To mark Cheese Grotto's tenth anniversary, each wheel of Suffolk Punch is branded with the Cheese Grotto logo after the cheese is made. The result is a wheel of Suffolk Punch that carries two stories at once: Parish Hill's, in the cheese itself, and Cheese Grotto's, seared right into the rind — a fitting way to mark ten years in business on a cheese already named for endurance and strength.

Suffolk Punch ages for a minimum of three months and each gourd made for Cheese Grotto weighs between 1 and 1 ½ pounds, ensuring a successful fit in our Grotto storage line.


*Please note: this style of cheese can have a mottling of white and blue molds that appear on the rind over time. This is completely natural and edible and can be easily maintained by rubbing down the cheese with a clean cloth.

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• This is a Thanksgiving preorder item.  For Thanksgiving delivery, order by Friday, November 20th.  All cheese orders ship via Two-Day.

• Please visit our shipping policy page for additional questions.

Suffolk Punch is handcrafted by Parish Hill Creamery, a small family creamery in Westminster West, Vermont, founded in 2013 by cheesemaker Peter Dixon and his wife, Rachel Fritz Schaal.

Peter's path to cheesemaking began early. Raised on a farm and educated at The Putney School — a working dairy farm and school in its own right — he later earned both a bachelor's and master's degree in dairy science from the University of Vermont. Along the way he cut his teeth at Shelburne Farms and Vermont Creamery, started his family's own Guilford Cheese Company back in the early 1980s, and spent decades consulting with cheesemakers across the country. By the time he and Rachel sat down at their farmhouse table to sketch out "one last, best cheese business," Peter had spent roughly thirty years studying, teaching, and tasting cheese around the world.

What they built together was a return to first principles. Parish Hill sources all of its milk from Elm Lea Farm, just up the road, and — rather than relying on commercial, lab-optimized starter cultures like most modern creameries — Dixon and Fritz Schaal make their own. They culture raw milk from a handful of hand-picked, hand-milked cows into natural starters, the same way cheesemakers did for centuries before commercial cultures existed. It's a slower, less predictable, more hands-on approach, but it's what allows Parish Hill's cheeses to carry the kind of depth and character that comes only from working with a living, local microbial culture rather than a standardized one. In their words, it's an attempt to make cheese the way it might have tasted a hundred years ago.

Pair with a pinot grigio, oil-cured olives, and charcuterie.

Location: Westminster West, Vermont
Rennet Type: Animal
Farmstead/Specialty/Artisan: Farmstead
Noelle Age: 3 to 6 months
Milk: Raw Cow's Milk