• 1. Where to Stay
• 2. Where to Eat
• 3. What to Do
• 4. Insider’s Tip
• 5. An Oddball Day

The Hanover Consumer Co-op   (Photo: Courtesy of Allan Reetz)

On top of its ridiculously good cheese, Vermont also has some of the nation’s best maple syrup (look for Grade A), bacon (Farmer’s Diner), and barbecue sauce (Richard’s). But the best place to buy all these goodies, ironically, isn’t in Vermont—it’s in Hanover, New Hampshire. The Hanover Consumer Co-op, located about a mile across the Connecticut River state line, is one of the nation’s greatest supermarkets and a longtime leader in the co-op movement. Here you can buy at least two great cheeses you won’t find on the trail: Cabot’s cloth-wrapped, cave-aged English Cheddar and Jasper Hill’s Constant Bliss, a favorite at both the restaurant and retail outposts of New York’s Artisanal. (Chef-owner Terrance Brennan keeps a vacation home in southern Vermont.)

Published on August 22, 2007 as a web exclusive.