(Photo: Hannah Whitaker)

THE BODEGA MILK
Tuscan Dairy Farms Vitamin D Whole Milk
$1.19 at Key Foods
“It has a standard, inoffensive grocery-store taste and a subtle, slightly chalky texture. Fairly flat in smell—to use some wine parlance, there’s not much ‘nose’ to it.”

THE ORGANIC MILK
Organic Valley 2 Percent Reduced-Fat Milk
$3.69 at Whole Foods
“Fine and milky, with a vaguely buttery taste on the palate. It still tastes processed, not like it’s been squirted straight from a cow’s udder into a dusty milk pail.”

THE GREENMARKET MILK
Winner: Milk Thistle Farm Organic Whole Milk
$4 at Union Square Greenmarket
“This is a real monster milk: sweet and nice, syrupy and smooth. It’s got a real complex smell, too: bold and fruity and rich. This is cereal milk for the gods.”

(Photo: Hannah Whitaker)

THE RAW MILK
Sankow’s Beaver Brook Farm Raw Milk
$5.49 at Walter Stewart’s Market
“This has a funky grass aftertaste that I am not enamored of—a little too barnyard for me. Maybe raw-milk aficionados like the flavor, but to me it’s like milk you’d feed a baby seal.”

Related:

• Archive: “Food Features”
• Articles by Adam Platt
• Table of Contents: Apr 26, 2010 issue of New York | Subscribe!