For the Best Fall Food in the US, Make Your Way to Vermont

Try artisanal bonbons and chocolate charcuterie

Photo: Miss_Alex/Shutterstock

Tavernier Chocolates is one of the state’s most inventive chocolate makers, run by husband-and-wife team Dar Tavernier-Singer and John Singer out of a converted 1910 mill building in Brattleboro. The two met in the San Francisco Bay Area when Dar was a visual artist with a background in biology and chemistry and John a craft coffee roaster and musician. They moved to southern Vermont in the late 1990s, drawn by the food culture and the local farms, creameries, and foragers whose ingredients now go into the chocolate.

She named the shop after her own surname. Tavernier is French for “tavern keeper” and is a nod to her grandmother Ella, who loved food and travel as much as she did. The duo started making chocolate for friends, then turned it into a catering side venture, the opened the business in 2014.

Nibble on award-winning artisanal cheese

Photo: Little Vignettes Photo/Shutterstock

Cheese-making in Vermont is treated as something close to an art form, and the state’s makers regularly place at the World Championship Cheese Contest, held every two years in Madison, Wisconsin. In 2014, Cabot Creamery won Best in Class for its Vintage Choice cheddar in the two-years-or-longer aged category. In 2020, Vermont Creamery took home three awards, including two Best-in-Class titles, for its Herb Chèvre and its Madagascar Vanilla Crème Fraîche. Its dome-shaped aged goat cheese, Coupole, took second in its category, two years after winning its own Best in Class.

With more than 45 cheesemakers statewide and roughly 150 varieties made from local milk, the range runs wide — cheddar, alpine styles, and blue among them.

Follow the Vermont Cheese Trail for a trip worth planning a whole day around. Shelburne Farms makes a farmhouse cheddar from the milk of its own herd. Nothin’ But Curd near Jay Peak in Troy turns out small-batch curds fresh enough to squeak. And Cabot Creamery, a farmer-owned cooperative making cheddar since 1919, is known for its clothbound cheddar — but you can’t go wrong with any of its classic cheddars. If you want some heat, try the habanero or cracked peppercorn cheddar, or the pepperjack. At the large Cabot visitors center you can learn how the cooperative’s farms approach sustainable dairying.

Sip on apple cider while watching the leaves turn red

Photo: Robophoto1/Shutterstock

Few things say fall in the Northeast like cider, and Vermont’s hard ciders lean on apples from the state’s orchards. Woodchuck has been making cider in Vermont since 1991 and runs its cidery in Middlebury, where the Cider House and Tap Room open Wednesday through Sunday for self-guided tours and tastings, with 20 ciders on tap.

In Burlington, Citizen Cider draws its apples from growers on both sides of Lake Champlain and pours a rotating lineup at its Pine Street tasting room, which also runs a food menu built around the cider. Start with the Unified Press, the off-dry flagship, then try the seasonal Tree Tapper, a maple cider made with Runamok syrup, and the Northern Spy, a dry single-varietal pressed from that one heritage apple.

Go on a brewery road trip

Photo: yuriyt/Shutterstock

Vermont’s craft beer scene is one of the country’s strongest, and the state consistently ranks first in breweries per capita. You can build a whole road trip around it by following the Vermont Brewers Association’s trails and their 40-plus member breweries.

The central corridor makes an easy route. Start in Windsor, where Harpoon runs a beer hall and beer garden and you can eat a plate of wings right alongside the tanks. A short drive west in Bridgewater Corners, Long Trail Brewing Co., going back to 1989 and named for the 273-mile hiking trail that crosses the state, pours its altbier-style flagship at a pub and deck over the Ottauquechee River.

From there the route bends north toward Waterbury and the Mad River Valley, the dense heart of Vermont beer. In Waterbury, Prohibition Pig runs a brewery behind a barbecue restaurant that’s worth the stop on its own. Just south in Waitsfield, Lawson’s Finest Liquids has a full taproom and kitchen built around Sip of Sunshine, its widely chased double IPA. Keep going to Stowe and you hit two very different ends of the spectrum: The Alchemist, which cans Heady Topper (the beer that turned Vermont into a hazy-IPA pilgrimage destination) and pours flights at its visitor center. There’s also von Trapp Brewing (of The Sound of Music fame), which makes Austrian-style lagers in a bierhall with mountain views, a break from all the hops.

Raise a glass of fruity and refreshing wine

Photo: JTTucker/Shutterstock

Cider and beer are the Green Mountain State’s headliners, but Vermont grows wine too. Its cold-hardy hybrid grapes like Frontenac, Marquette, and La Crescent ripen into crisp, high-acid wines suited to the short northern season, and most are still picked by hand.

The one to seek out is ice wine, a dessert wine made from grapes left on the vine into winter and pressed while frozen, usually once temperatures drop to around 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Freezing concentrates the sugar and flavor, and Vermont’s tart hybrids take to it unusually well. Boyden Valley Winery in Cambridge even makes a rare red ice wine under its Vermont Ice label.

To string a few together, the Vermont Grape & Wine Council runs a winery passport you can get stamped as you go, with prizes for filling it. Worth building a route around: Boyden Valley in Cambridge, poured in a restored carriage barn; Shelburne Vineyard, one of the state’s largest, just south of Burlington; Lincoln Peak in New Haven, a Champlain Valley vineyard making estate wines entirely from its own grapes; and Snow Farm Vineyard, out on the Lake Champlain islands in South Hero.

Taste the gooey goodness that is maple syrup

Photo: JTTucker/Shutterstock

Maple is Vermont’s signature taste. The state leads the country in production by a wide margin. In 2024 it made about 3.1 million gallons, representing more than half the entire US crop, and it holds tight to a purity standard: real Vermont maple syrup is nothing but boiled sap with no added sugar or sweeteners. Well over a thousand sugarmakers work the state, and many open their doors during the spring sap run, especially over Vermont’s Maple Open House Weekend, when you can follow the whole process from tapping the trees to canning. Maple Grove Farms does tastings and tours.