Michael Scheps is a third-generation cheesemaker who started working in his father and grandfather’s operation, Scheps Cheese in New Jersey, when he was 14 years old. He’s been hand stretching mozzarella ever since and is also an absolute expert with ricotta.
In 2003, at the age of 68, Johann Englert was visiting Manchester, Vermont, when she had a flashback to her college years abroad in Napoli. She had stumbled upon a specialty store with a shelf full of mozzarella balls, and had inadvertently discovered Mike Scheps' genuine, Old World mozzarella. A business partnership was born. From those first 20 mozzarella balls to the current 40,000 pounds of cheese produced weekly, Maplebrook Farm has established itself as a premier producer of handmade artisanal cheeses in the Green Mountains of Vermont, distributing unparalleled quality cheeses throughout the country.
Maplebrook makes all of its own curd from only 100 percent Vermont milk and essentially uses the same recipe that Michael learned from his father when he was a boy. What began with 3 local Vermonters has grown to include 65 employees making small batches of cheese and wrapping them by hand every day of the week.
