As a day at The Village Cheese Shop comes to an end, owner Michael Affatato considers what kind of meat he might throw on the grill that night. But really, who is he kidding? It’s likely those plans will get scrapped to instead nibble on some truffled brie he’s been eyeing in his cheese case all day, complemented by a drizzle of local honey, fresh sourdough bread and a glass of excellent wine, all enjoyed alongside his life partner, Leah Tillman, head of marketing for the shop.
“We’re very serious foodies,” says Affatato. “It’s our religion, it’s our passion and that’s what we convey to the public.”
And it’s just that — the vigor behind his, Tillman’s and The Village Cheese Shop staff’s love for cheese — that keeps customers coming back to their world of curd and culture.
From Grind to Rind
Early on, Affatato had no idea he’d one day be selling cheese for a living. He spent his youth in Rocky Point, moving to France as a young adult to earn a degree in advertising design with a minor in photography.
In the late 1980s, while working as a photographer in Milan, Affatato took a trip to California to visit a friend. Despite being surrounded by European vino for several years, it was the pioneering energy and exciting quality he found in the wineries 6,000 miles away, in Napa Valley, that changed the trajectory of his life.
“The angels sung, the clouds parted,” Affatato recalls with a laugh. “It was a combination of the scenery, the setting, the ambiance, the people, the food and the wine.”
He said goodbye to advertising and photography, moved back to the United States and started a job at Garnet Wine & Spirits, a wine shop in New York City, ultimately working his way up to a position with Paramount Brand, a distributor.
From there, Affatato moved back to France, where he met his then-wife and became co-owner of a 28-acre vineyard.
In 2003, the now-former couple purchased a 1646 château on the right bank of Bordeaux, in the Bordeaux Supérieur appellation. They made exclusively proprietary wine themselves on the property, using mainly merlot, cabernet sauvignon, sauvignon gris and sauvignon blanc grapes.
It was then that Affatato was really thrown into the world of cheese.
“Systematically, every meal we had, the crescendo, the dessert, was cheese,” he says, and it’s a tradition he has carried on since. “I’ve had it for 17 years, 365 days a year.”
After 10 years of running the vineyard, he and his wife amicably divorced and sold it in 2013.
Affatato’s first favorite cheese, Comté, from eastern France, still holds a spot in his heart today, and his journey as a foodie came before the vineyard.
While working for Maison Chapoutier, a Rhône Valley wine producer, from 1998 to 2003, Affatato was dining with and entertaining plenty of clients at Michelin Star restaurants, acquainting his taste buds with new, engrossing flavors.
As he got into his own kitchen more, and in turn, at local farmers markets, his interest in cuisine grew. Even then, he was connecting with cheesemongers, trying different varieties.
Starter Culture
The Village Cheese Shop on Love Lane — founded by Rosemary Batcheller, a family friend of Affatato’s — opened in 2001.
Affatato moved back to Rocky Point in 2014 to care for his mother, who had been diagnosed with ALS. He purchased the shop from Batcheller in 2015, going from a regular, to an employee, to the owner.
“She was very smart,” Affatato says of Batcheller. “She said, ‘Before we talk about you buying the shop, why don’t you work here for a couple of months, just to see if you like the shop, if you like the environment, if you like the vibe.’”
While Batcheller wasn’t open to selling at first, Affatato’s persistence and his immediate integration into the shop’s workflow eased her apprehensions.
Affatato inherited Batcheller’s staff and many components of her business model, including the shop’s ongoing fondue program, which was her brainchild. He also retained a full-time chef, serving panini, salads and soups for lunch.
Over time, Affatato scaled back on food service and employees, creating an increasingly intimate, specialized experience for his customers that allowed for more tastings, education and conversation surrounding their products.
“I learned pretty quickly that it was a better business for me to really focus more on the cheese retail,” he says.
As far as unfamiliar territory goes, there was a learning curve for figuring out the ordering process — some cheeses are aged while others are quickly perishable and often expensive — but Affatato caught on. Not only did he get the hang of ordering, he also found the sweet spot in terms of what cheeses he likes to have on hand, typically a combination of about 95 percent European and 5 percent domestic artisan producers.
“We find that European cheeses are better quality and less expensive, even with the weak dollar,” says Affatato. “The cost of doing business here in the states, be it Wisconsin, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, where a lot of cheese comes from, is too expensive, so our selling price is much higher.”
However, there is one local cheesemaker who’s always on heavy rotation: Affatato has done business with Erin Argo Burke of Catapano Dairy Farm for years. When she and her husband, Connor Burke, purchased the Peconic property in 2020, they wanted to be involved in the community in a productive, constructive way but had little experience in dairy farming.
“We took a leap of faith and Michael was one of the ones who was a great supporter of ours and a champion of ours,” says Erin.
Erin and Connor have continued the tradition started by their farm’s first owners, Karen and Michael Catapano, of stocking chèvre for Affatato.
“I think he recognizes that our chèvre is certainly not like a French chèvre,” says Erin. “It’s certainly different. It sort of has a milder flavor. He recognizes how important it is to have local businesses supply places like The Village Cheese Shop.”
Depending on the time of year, Affatato typically carries around 100 cheeses. Some standout products include their own truffle brie, which they make, black truffle cheese from Italy, a Dutch truffle, and triple cream brie from France and Switzerland, among a seasonally changing multitude of others.
Customers can also purchase premade or hand-selected platters carefully curated by Affatato and his fromage-obsessed staff.
“[Around] the holidays, especially during Christmas time,” says Tillman, “the back room turns into a platter-making facility.”
As Europe is where Affatato discovered his love of curds and whey, it’s also where his culinary heart lies, having spent so much of his life there and regularly returning to get reinspired while visiting one of his daughters, who lives in Bordeaux.
“We like to keep it fresh,” says Affatato. “My family is in France and we go back a lot.”
The Village Cheese Shop also stocks cheese plate-adjacent delicacies like caviar, crackers, fresh bread, jams and marmalades, charcuterie, honey and other gourmet treats. In the little atrium area just beyond the cheese counter, customers can get table service for fondue and meat and cheese plates, with French wines paired alongside them, or browse the abundance of delicious dairy accoutrements displayed. And just off to the left of the cheese counter, Affatato and Tillman added a sweet little coffee bar, serving excellent versions of Italian café favorites to fuel your fromage browsing.
A Labor of Love
Like many businesses, the COVID-19 pandemic shifted some of the ways the shop does business and morphed its main customer base.
“There were four of five days where nobody came through the front door,” Affatato says. “We were scared for our own health.”
But by the sixth or seventh day of lockdowns, customers started calling, asking if the shop did curbside pickup or delivery. Affatato charged nothing additional, and he and Tillman drove as far east as Orient Point and far west into Suffolk County, dropping products off themselves.
“When people started placing orders, which we were so grateful for, there were definitely some moments where tears were shed,” Tillman says.
Affatato and Tillman also began stocking more grocery basics, like milk, bread and eggs to help their customers fill their fridges and pantries with essentials.
When mask mandates ended, business came back with a boom. Affatato began stocking some new products, swapping out the grocery staples for truffles and Iberico.
He noticed that many of his customers were now Manhattanites who had moved to the North Fork at the height of the pandemic restrictions and decided to stay, bearing “New York City preferences, lifestyles and tastes,” he says.
Affatato and Tillman decided to add another layer of service to The Village Cheese Shop’s menu: delivery. After the initial DIY deliveries, shipping cheese across the island and nationwide (they have clients in Florida, California and many states in between) became part of the curd appeal of the little cheese shop that could.
“We don’t take anything for granted,” says Affatato. “We take every order we can.”
He also happily participates in local community events like First Fridays on Love Lane, where The Village Cheese Shop serves $5 fondue and $5 glasses of wine during the pedestrian-friendly outdoor end-of-the-week fête, during which Love Lane closes for local businesses to interact with the community the first Friday of each month from May through October.
Affatato has started hosting themed night events at the shop centered around tastings, dinners and other interactive opportunities like “Roan and Raclette,” “Cheese Chocolate and Champagne” and caviar nights, many of which sell out, with waitlists of more than 60 people.
“We don’t socialize that much because we get so much social energy from this place eight hours a day,” says Affatato. “People come in here and they speak the same language, they’re passionate about food and wine. It’s like a constant rush for me.”
His life may have landed on little Love Lane, but its Affatato’s love of cheese that’s brought hunks, slices and dollops of world discovery to the plates and palates of North Forkers. And that pleases him just fine.
“It’s a little tiny vignette, a little chunk of Americana that you don’t see anymore,” he says. “There are no chain stores. You have your deli, you have your restaurant, your Italian market, your wine bar, your haircutter.”
Thanks to Affatato, your cheese shop, too.
The Village Cheese Shop (105 Love Lane, Mattituck, 631-298-8556) is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
