I was reading a publication mostly circulated among the Amish, and the help-wanted section contained the usual opportunities… construction trades, farmers market stands, bakeries, but then one tiny listing really caught my eye. “Help wanted to pack cultured butter for Pepe Saya in York County.” Naturally, I wondered who is Pepe Saya? A few nanoseconds on the internet turned up a fascinating story.
Pepe Saya is an Australian butter company, which specializes in “beautiful tasting cultured butter.” The company started in 2009 (in Australia, naturally.) In 2010, they sold their first “round” of butter. The company grew and expanded from there, but in 2024, the company, having grown into a globally exporting brand, opened a facility here in America – in York County, Lancaster County’s neighbor to the west.
At the facility, largely staffed with Amish workers (mostly ladies) their cultured butter rounds are being kneaded, placed into molds to form the proprietary round shape, packaged for retail and labelled. The butter brand’s slogan is “The Round Butter With The Head On It” (as a cartoon visage of Pepe features on the label.)
So, does the Pepe Saya company milk cows in Australia, and ship the milk to York County PA? No of course not. The American product comes from here, using Pepe Saya’s process and recipe. To explain what “cultured butter” is (as opposed to any other butter you’d see on the grocery store shelf) I’ll let the company itself handle that. “The difference in our butter is the process we go through to make it. The butter is beurre de baratte (butter of the churn)- it is batch churned from single origin cream, creating a natural and less processed product.
When the beautiful local cream arrives from the farms to the creamery at Gap View Farm in Pennsylvania, we heat up the cream and inoculate it with a lactobacillus culture. We then let the cream culture, allowing for a full buttery taste and slight tang to develop, creating the unique flavors of the cultured butter- this is our crème fraiche. The crème fraiche is then churned, which produces our buttermilk and of course the butter.”
If trying some Australian-style cultured butter, churned by Amish in Pennsylvania, is a food journey you’d like to take, look for the “rounds” at your local grocery store, or go to Pepe Saya’s website and you can have some shipped to your home. www.PepeSaya.com (They currently ship to addresses in PA, NY, and CT.)