Dairy farmers bottle their own milk near Winton

The van Warmerdam family has joined the tiny number of dairy farmers who bottle their own milk.

Their Top Line Milk sets itself apart, so to speak, in another way: It is not homogenized, so the cream rises to the top in the bottles. Shake it up and it’s ready to drink, a throwback to how many people consumed milk in the past.

“We get that over and over – ‘This tastes like the milk when I was growing up,’ ” said Paul van Warmerdam, who launched it in March with his wife, Sonya, and their three children.

Top Line also pasteurizes differently than the mainstream industry – “low and slow” at 145 degrees for 30 minutes, compared with the 280 degrees for two seconds at some of the big plants.

The company, along Oakdale Road just south of the Merced River, is the second in the Northern San Joaquin Valley that is bottling on the farm. Nutcher Milk Co. started last year along Grayson Road, southwest of Modesto.

A few other California dairy farms have joined the trend, but it is still a miniscule part of the total fluid milk – 662 million gallons last year. And that does not include the even larger volume going into cheese, yogurt, ice cream and other dairy products.

The van Warmerdams talked about their venture during a tour of the main farm and bottling plant last week. They do just 800 to 1,000 gallons a week for now, all of it in plastic bottles. Virtually all of the milk from their 3,800 cows goes to Dairy Farmers of America, which has plants in Turlock and Hughson that make various products.

The farm has not added to its 55-person workforce for the bottling, but it might hire four or five more people as volume grows.

Top Line is in just 10 stores so far in Merced, Stanislaus and nearby counties, but the company aims to get into 35 more soon in the Bay Area and Sacramento area. Fans also can buy it at the plant on Thursday afternoons and at the Modesto Certified Farmers Market on Saturday mornings.

The prices for whole milk – there are no lower-fat versions – range from $1.39 for eight ounces to $5.99 for a gallon. Chocolate milk is $1.79 for eight ounces to $4.99 for a half-gallon. All are pricier than conventional milk.

The milk is on the menu at the Tri-Tipery, a new restaurant nearby that specializes in tri-tip. It is owned by Jana and Rob Nairn, who also run an AgLink, an online business that matches local farmers with buyers.

“Tri-Tipery customers love Top Line Milk as it pairs great with our special fried Oreos,” Jana Nairn said by email. “We offer the single-serve bottles in chocolate and white with lunch, and customers also enjoy buying gallons and half-gallons to take home.”

Homogenization started in the late 1890s and became widespread as large plants came to dominate dairy production. Van Warmerdam said the process “explodes” fat globules into smaller pieces that some consumers have trouble digesting.

Pasteurization kills pathogens that can make people sick, but van Warmerdam said the high-heat process reduces milk quality.

“People like the idea that our nutrients aren’t cooked at the high temperature,” he said.

Top Line operates under a state permit and has to meet standards for butterfat, pH and other milk traits.

The raw milk comes from the cows at about 100 degrees and is quickly cooled to 37 degrees. It then sits in a pair of 8,000-gallon tanks before moving to the pasteurizer. From there it goes to the bottling line for filling, capping and labeling.

“Within a couple of hours of being milked, it’s in the bottle – fresh,” van Warmerdam said.

This story was originally published August 14, 2016 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Dairy farmers bottle their own milk near Winton."