Swirl is small-batch gelato and slow-spun soft-serve, made in three-gallon batches with whole milk from one Vermont herd, fruit picked the same week, and not a single powder. We churn at dawn. You eat it before the afternoon melts. That part isn't optional.
We buy from growers and makers who still answer their own phone
Most frozen dessert hides behind a label you need a chemistry degree to read. Ours fits on one line, and every word in it earns the batch.
Every base begins with non-homogenized whole milk and cream from a single grass-fed herd in Waitsfield, forty minutes up Route 100. We pasteurize it slow the night before we churn.
Strawberries get macerated, never 'flavored.' When the last good peach is gone, so is the peach gelato. We'd sooner drop a flavor than fake one.
We beat far less air into each batch, so a scoop lands dense and silky on the spoon instead of fluffy and forgettable on the tongue.
No gums, no stabilizers, no maltodextrin, no 'natural flavor.' If it isn't milk, fruit, sugar, or a real bean or nut, it never goes near the machine.
Gelato peaks within hours of the churn and quietly fades after. So we start at 5am and pull a fresh batch the moment the case dips low.
Small batch, counted honestly
The board changes with the harvest and, honestly, our mood. Here's what's spinning today — once a batch is gone, it's gone until the fruit comes back.
Wildflower honey cooked down dark and bittersweet, finished with a flake of grey salt.
Macerated local berries, a hard squeeze of lime, dairy-free and unapologetically bright.
Madagascar bean, slow-spun, pulled by hand into a tall, slightly precarious curl.
Cold sweet-cream shattered through with thin, snapping shards of dark chocolate.
A double shot folded in cold so the roast stays sharp and the bitterness stays bright.
Deeply nutty, a little smoky, the grey of the sky an hour before a storm.
Everywhere else, soft-serve is the machine in the corner nobody thinks about. We built our entire counter around getting one swirl exactly right.
We re-dial the machine to each morning's humidity, so the curl holds its shape all the way from the first pull to the last lick.
A house base of Madagascar and Tahitian beans — floral and bright up front, deep and round on the finish.
Trained scoopers pull a tall, even spiral by hand. No two come out identical; every one of them stands tall.
An optional hot-chocolate shell that hits the cold curl and sets in seconds, then shatters on the first bite. House dip, real cocoa.
“I drove forty minutes for one scoop of the burnt honey and I'd turn around and do it again tonight. It tastes like somebody back there actually cared.”
“My kid won't touch grocery-store ice cream anymore. He says it 'tastes like air.' He's eight, and the thing is, he's not wrong.”
“We put the stracciatella on our tasting menu and three tables asked if we churned it ourselves. We did not. That's the highest compliment we can pass along.”
Scoop-shop prices, hand-packed pints to take home. No app, no points card, no upsell at the register — just come hungry.
One flavor, your cup or cone.
Four mini scoops. Can't decide? Don't.
Hand-packed at the counter, pressed dense.
More milk, less cream, far less air, and a slightly warmer serving temperature. The result is denser, melts slower on the tongue, and carries flavor harder. Ours runs denser still — that's the low-overrun churn doing its job.
Always. Our sorbettos are water-and-fruit based and naturally vegan — usually two or three on the board. We churn them on dedicated equipment kept clean for allergies.
Because the fruit does. We make in three-gallon batches with whatever's actually in season, so a flavor only lasts until that batch runs out. Watch the board — it turns over every week.
Yes to both. Reserve hand-packed pints for pickup, or book the cart for parties and weddings — we'll roll in the machine and pull soft-serve curls on site until your guests tap out.
We churn until we sell out, and on a warm afternoon that comes early. Find your nearest scoop shop and get there before the case does.