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A 1950s icon—the uniformed man who left glass bottles of cold milk at our doors—disappeared sometime in the 1970s. Of course, it’s not as though anyone ever saw much of him. He was almost like Santa Claus, delivering a present in the wee hours of the morning. But after his departure, devotees of his product never stopped missing him. Now he’s back, with a 21st-century twist: You place your order online.
Frank Acosta, co-owner and creative director of Manhattan Milk (manhattanmilk.com), promises not just organic milk from pasture-raised cows free of growth hormones but also personalized service of a kind not known around these parts for the past couple of decades. He and his partner, operations manager Matthew Marone, will even come right into your kitchen and put your order in the refrigerator—plus, they’ll pick up the empties and reuse them. And despite the name, the duo expect to add Brooklyn to their delivery route in the near future.
Manhattan Milk’s bottles aren’t the only ones on the market. The ubiquitous Ronnybrook Farm (ronnybrook.com), of course, brought back the glass bottle in the 1990s. But now the company has some Greenmarket competition: a new brand called Milk Thistle (milkthistlefarm.com), which comes from a family-owned dairy in upstate New York.
By law, all milk has to be pasteurized—treated with heat to kill off disease-causing bacteria. But none of these dairies ultrapasteurize, as some brands do to extend shelf life even longer than standard pasteurization. And none of these bottled milks are homogenized, which means that the cream or milk fat is not force-mixed together with the milk, but rises naturally to the top. You can skim it off or shake it up; either way, even low-fat non-homogenized milks tend to have a richer flavor.
To suss out the various merits of these brands, we assembled a team of local experts ages four to five for a blind taste test of plain and chocolate whole milk from Ronnybrook Farm, Manhattan Milk and Milk Thistle.
