Jack Gaffney makes what may be Australia’s most expensive butter. It may also be the country’s best. While $4 will buy a 250g block of supermarket butter, Gaffney’s handmade Madeleine Signature Butter fetches $12 for 120g at farmers’ markets in Melbourne.

Gaffney, a copywriter by day and butter maker at weekends, is part of a growing number of artisans who go to extreme lengths to produce butter worthy of a premium price tag.

His Madeleine Signature Butter has a soft, cool texture, a rich mouthfeel, and aromas of sweet, slightly caramelised cream and pasture.

“It’s probably the best butter in Australia,” says cheesemonger Anthony Femia, of Melbourne’s Maker & Monger. “Jack has taken the time to learn the art, chemistry, and mechanics of French butter-making.”

The butter, flecked with sel de Guerande (French sea salt flakes) is meant to be eaten in the French style, like a cheese, says Femia. “It is superb.”

For Gaffney, it’s a labour of love, a homage to the butters he fell in love with while living in France with his now wife. After 18 months in Montpellier, in the south of France, they moved to Brittany, in the north-west. “I learned to make butter on a small farmhouse dairy with just 12 Bretonne pie noir cows,” he says.

On returning to Australia in 2019, he spent years perfecting his Brittany-style cultured butter, using a secret blend of French butter cultures to ferment the cream, a process that changes the sugars into lactic acid.

He even imported a 1920s French malaxer, a machine designed to remove the buttermilk and ripen the butter by kneading it slowly with a rippled rolling pin.

“I wanted to bring this level of artisan excellence to Australia,” Gaffney says. His first batch of Madeleine was hand-formed, wrapped, and sold in May last year.

Naomi Ingleton is a pioneer in the field. She made her first batch of artisan butter in 2007 under the Myrtleford Butter Factory label, which evolved into King Valley Dairy.

“Making artisan butter is an art,” she says. “There are so many variables. It’s like winemaking, only with a new vintage every day.” Now working with CopperTree Farms in Frenchs Forest, NSW, Ingleton produces exceptionally smooth, clean butter.

“Great butter starts with the soil. Healthy soil means healthy pasture, which means healthy cows and quality milk,” she says. “We have a problem in Australia with weeds in the pastures, like capeweed, that affect the taste of the butter.”

CopperTree is particular about the animals’ feed, supplementing pasture with energy-dense fermented lucerne called silage.

One fan of CopperTree butter is Corey Costelloe, owner-chef of 20 Chapel restaurant in Sydney’s Marrickville. He uses it to poach John dory and prawns, the butter’s lactic acid adding a creamy tang to the seafood. In the dining room, it stars on the table.

“It’s balanced, not too cheesy like some cultured butters,” says Costelloe. “It’s fresh and lacks the rancidity of other Australian-made butters.”

This notion of rancidity irks Alberto Borghi from Del Bocia in Melbourne. After working at That’s Amore Cheese in Melbourne’s Thomastown, he longed to make butter like that which he remembers growing up with on a self-sustaining farm near Italy’s Dolomites – sweet butter that is churned but not fermented.

He believes many Australian industrial butters are rancid due to poor technique. “You must remove the buttermilk, or it spoils the butter,” he says.

After churning his cream for hours at low speed, Borghi washes the butter in near-freezing water to remove the buttermilk.

The result is a pale yellow northern Italian-style butter with a clean finish and delicate aroma of sweet pasture.

“Australians’ taste for quality butter is becoming more refined,” says Borghi. “People are willing to pay for something so carefully made, of such high quality, and truly delicious.”

Six leading Australian artisan butters

Madeleine Salted Cultured Butter, 200g, $15

Hand-formed, this golden-yellow butter is flecked with French salt. Clean and fresh with notes of butterscotch. (Available in Melbourne only)

Del Bocia Salted Butter 250g, $14.50

Aromatic, silky smooth, and cool on the palate, it has sweet pasture and floral notes. (Available in Melbourne and Sydney)

CopperTree Farms, 200g, $8.95

Clean-tasting, creamy, and smooth to taste, with a lingering richness and a light lactic tang. (Available in Melbourne and Sydney)

Lard Ass Cultured Butter, 225g, $10

Rich and slightly mushroomy, this cultured butter finishes with a delicate and clean salty tang. (Available in Melbourne, Newcastle, northern NSW, and later this year, in Sydney)

Gippsland Jersey Butter,150g, $7

Made with 100 per cent Jersey cream, this is a beautifully clean-tasting butter with a slightly tangy finish and a cool, creamy mouthfeel. (Available in Melbourne and Sydney)

Pepe Saya Cultured Butter, 200g, $9.50

A rich but lightly salted butter with slightly cheesy notes and a savoury palate. (Available in Melbourne and Sydney)