It takes only 10 minutes at Jasper Hill Farm to get a sense of what the place is trying to become. The farm is a big construction site, with giant concrete pourers trundling down the rutted drive to the spot behind the barn where the local stone has been blasted out and a 20,000-square-foot cheese palace is rising. The $3 million finishing facility, set to be done by winter, will have five environments—each varying in temperature and relative humidity, from the 39-degree, 95 percent humidity that a soft, mold-ripened cheese needs to the 55-degree, 85 percent humidity space that suits hard, aged cheese—and seven cellars. (In a nod to how fantastic it all seems, each is named for one of the Seven Dwarfs.) A robot, custom-made in Europe and only the second of its kind in America, will turn and brush aging cheddars. There will be offices, packing and shipping areas, and a loading dock.

The project is being financed with $2.3 million in loans and $700,000 in equity from an eclectic group of 11 investors, including friends and family of the Kehlers; Neal’s Yard Dairy; a Vermont nonprofit that supports sustainable farm use and land conservation; and the French affineur (or finisher) Herve Mons, who has a similar facility near Lille. “What they’re buying is a share of the revenue stream from the cellars,” explains Mateo.

He expects that stream to grow spectacularly once the facility comes online. Within a decade, the Kehlers hope to send trucks laden with 1.5 million pounds of cheese annually to markets across America. It’s a piddling amount compared with industrial cheesemakers; Kraft, America’s largest cheese processor, can produce 1.5 million pounds in just two days at its New Ulm, Minnesota, plant. But much of Jasper Hill’s cheese will come from makers who produce on an even smaller scale and don’t have the capacity to expand, to finish their cheeses themselves, or to sell beyond local farmers’ markets. “Maybe they’re totally disconnected from the national market, or they don’t have the confidence to make that flight to New York or that cold call. Or maybe they’re just not interested in doing some part of it,” Mateo says. “Jasper Hill will be the umbrella.”

Alison Hooper, a cheesemaking pioneer who co-founded Vermont Butter & Cheese Co. in 1982, says the Kehlers have identified areas of need among makers. “We’ve had a proliferation of cheesemakers who have a farm, a recipe, and milk,” she says. “But they have no real training, especially in the technology.”

The specialty-cheese market, which includes both foreign and U.S. high-end products, is estimated to be worth about $6 billion a year, and demand for artisanal and farmstead cheeses is growing 15 percent a year, faster than any other segment of the dairy market. It’s far outstripping cheesemakers’ ability to produce, leaving little time to refine or finish their products as they’d like. Jasper Hill is cashing in on this for clients such as Neil Urie of Bonnieview Farm in Craftsbury Common, who has sent some cheeses to Jasper Hill to be finished. “They probably take better care of it than I do,” Urie says. But that care comes at a price—a third of the $12 a pound that his Moss End blue and Ben Nevis hard sheep’s cheese gross at wholesale. Such finishing services are used also by more-prominent makers, including Cabot Creamery and Grafton Cheddar, and will account for 12.5 percent of the Jasper Hill’s revenue this year.