Green Hill is a soft, bloomy-rind cow's-milk cheese from Sweet Grass Dairy in Thomasville, Georgia, made in the camembert style from grass-fed cows raised on rotational pasture. It's the dairy's signature cheese and one of the most consistently awarded American farmstead cheeses of the past two decades.
The cheese takes its name literally from Green Hill Dairy, the family's original grazing farm, not from any metaphor about the landscape.
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A Rotational-Grazing Farm Became a Cheese Company
Al and Desiree Wehner ran a conventional dairy farm near Thomasville, Georgia, through the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1993, after Al attended a conference on New Zealand-style rotational grazing, they converted the farm, called Green Hill Dairy, to intensive rotational grazing.
Desiree took a cheesemaking class at Cal Poly, fell for goat cheesemaking, and spent about a year making cheese daily in refrigerators lining the family's back porch before Sweet Grass Dairy formally launched in December 2000.
St. James Cheese Co. has called 2000 a symbolic starting point for what's often described as the American Cheese Renaissance, the modern resurgence of US artisan cheese, noting that Georgia had no real artisanal cheese tradition of its own at the time.
The Wehners' daughter Jessica and her husband Jeremy Little took over the business by 2005, with Jeremy apprenticing under Desiree and French cheese consultant Jean-Marc Maysonnave before becoming head cheesemaker.
Cheese writer Sasha Davies, who visited the farm, quotes Jasper Hill Farm's Mateo Kehler telling the couple: "You want a good laugh? Walk into any bank and tell them you want a loan to start or buy a small dairy farm." They found a way anyway.
Why It's Called Green Hill
Sweet Grass Dairy states plainly on its own site that the cheese is "named after the first rotational-grazing dairy in our family," meaning the actual 340-acre Green Hill Dairy property near Thomasville. It's a direct reference to the physical farm, not a poetic name invented for the product.
Jeremy Little has described the philosophy behind that choice of milk source simply: "The best thing for me, personally, is the realization that we are chasing something that we'll never find: the perfect cheese." Asked what drives the operation day to day, he said, "Very simply, making people happy."
How Green Hill Is Made
Green Hill is made from pasteurized, grass-based cow's milk, traditional animal rennet, and dairy cultures, with no other ingredients. Culture magazine describes the process as a five-hour hand-ladling job, meaning the curd is gently spooned into molds in multiple passes rather than machine-pressed, a technique associated with preserving a smoother, creamier interior in camembert-style cheeses.
Ladling keeps the curd whole on the way into the mold. Whey drains through the gaps between intact pieces instead of being squeezed out under pressure, and the paste that results stays open and yielding rather than tight.
The wheels age for about two weeks, just long enough to develop a thin, edible bloomy rind while the interior stays soft rather than fully liquefying, the way a longer-aged French camembert would. Sweet Grass Dairy's herd is roughly 50 percent Jersey crossed with breeds including Holstein, Friesian, Norwegian Red, shorthorn, and Limousin, chosen for their smaller size and heat tolerance under Georgia's climate and rotational grazing system.
The cows graze outdoors year-round, moving to new paddocks roughly every twelve hours, with supplemental feed making up only about 10 percent of their diet.
That pasture shows up in the color before it shows up in the flavor. Pigment from fresh grass carries through the milk into the butterfat, which is why the paste reads golden rather than the chalk white of a cheese made on stored feed.
Two weeks is a short ripening window, and you can see it on a cut face. The band just under the rind runs softer than the middle, and that gradient is the clearest sign that a bloomy wheel is young.
What Green Hill Tastes Like
Culture magazine describes the flavor arc as it ages: fresh, it carries "a sweet butter and popcorn backbone with notes of grass and cream," which develops "a pleasant touch of cellar and funk" and "lingering aromas of cream and sauteed mushrooms" as the rind matures. Cheesemonger Marcella Wright, an ACS Certified Cheese Professional, has described it as "love at first taste," with an "unctuous flavor and silky, mouth-coating texture."
David Phillips of Chicago's Potash Markets has praised its look alongside its flavor: "Its golden paste and delicate snowy (edible) rind reflect the excellent milk from Sweet Grass's own dedicated herds, and the care and craft of its cheesemakers."
Serve it cold and most of that goes missing. Butterfat holds its aroma in while it is still firm, so a wedge cut straight from the refrigerator reads as mild salted butter and very little else.
Eat the rind rather than trimming it. On a two-week wheel it gives way with the paste instead of standing apart from it, and the mushroom side of the flavor sits in the rind more than in the interior.
Texture carries as much of the impression as flavor does. The paste coats the palate and clears slowly, so a thin wedge lands heavier than its size suggests.
Awards
Sweet Grass Dairy's own site credits Green Hill with three dated first-place wins at the American Cheese Society's annual competition, in 2007, 2008, and 2015, plus a Gold Medal at the 2015 World Cheese Awards. The company is often described as an "eight-time" ACS winner overall, though the remaining wins aren't individually dated on the producer's own materials.
Green Hill also won a 2024 Good Food Award in the cheese category.
How to Serve Green Hill
Green Hill works the way any bloomy-rind camembert does: served at room temperature so the paste softens, alongside crusty bread or crackers. Culture magazine recommends pairing it with sparkling wine or Champagne, noting "the bubbles cut through the cheese's rich double cream." Jeremy Little's own favorite pairing is Green Hill with a 20-year Tawny Port.
Cut it cold and serve it warm. A thin blade rinsed under hot water and wiped dry goes through a chilled wheel without dragging the paste, and the slices relax into shape while they sit out.
Cut a small wheel in wedges from the center out. The paste nearest the rind softens ahead of the middle, so a radial cut hands everyone the same mix of the two instead of giving one person the runny edge and the next a firm core.
Because the paste melts easily, Green Hill also works baked whole and served warm with honey or fruit preserves, similar to how a baked camembert is served.
Bake it in a dish rather than straight on a tray. The rind softens enough to let the paste out through any crack, and about 15 minutes at 350F is enough to loosen a wheel this small through the middle.
Keep what sits alongside plain. Baguette, water crackers, and tart apple give the paste something to push against, while cured meat and sharp pickles flatten it.
What to Use Instead When Green Hill Isn't Available
A young French Camembert is the closest substitute in style and texture. For another American grass-fed option, Brie-style domestic wheels from other US creameries offer a similar buttery, bloomy-rind profile, though most won't carry Green Hill's specific mushroom-and-popcorn character.
Match the size, not only the style. A full 8-inch Brie ripens on a slower clock than a 7.5-ounce disc, so it can still be firm through the center when the outer band has already gone soft.
Ask for the youngest wheel in the case rather than the ripest one. Green Hill is sold at about two weeks, and a substitute caught at the same point in its life sits far closer than a fully mature wheel of the same cheese.
If the plan was to bake it whole, buy the smallest wheel on the counter. A large one needs longer in the oven, and the rind often splits and lets the paste out before the middle has run.
Buying Green Hill
Green Hill is sold as a small 7.5-ounce wheel, both direct from Sweet Grass Dairy and through specialty retailers around the US.
Getting a whole wheel matters more on a soft cheese than it does on a hard one. A cut face dries and firms within a day or two behind shop plastic, while a wheel arrives with the rind closed and nothing exposed.
There is no season to wait for. The herd grazes year-round instead of moving indoors for the winter, so a February wheel comes off the same system as a June one.
Buy it for a date rather than for the refrigerator. The rind keeps working after you get it home, so a wheel bought two weeks ahead of the dinner it was meant for will not be the same cheese on the night.
Nutrition and Safety
Per the official nutrition label, a one-ounce serving of Green Hill has 120 calories, 11g of total fat, 7g of saturated fat, 40mg of cholesterol, 190mg of sodium, and 4g of protein, with no carbohydrates.
One ounce is roughly an eighth of the wheel, a smaller piece than most people cut from a soft cheese on a board. Two of those slices put the saturated fat at 14g, so the label figure is a unit of measurement rather than a portion anyone actually serves.
Green Hill is made with pasteurized milk, which makes it a safer choice than raw-milk soft cheeses for pregnant women and others avoiding unpasteurized dairy.
Storing Green Hill
Once opened, use Green Hill within about a week for the best texture, as the bloomy rind continues to ripen and soften the paste even under refrigeration.
Fold the paper against the cut face instead of leaving it open. Exposed paste dries first, and a dried skin across the cut stops the wheel ripening evenly from that point on.
Keep it away from anything strongly scented. A bloomy rind is porous enough to take on the smell of a shared drawer, and a wheel parked next to cut onion will taste of onion by the next day.
If the paste starts running before you want it to, move the wheel to the coldest shelf at the back. Cold slows the rind without stopping it, which buys a couple of days rather than a couple of weeks.
