There is a gelato shop called Gemlato, in San Luis Obispo, California, where the gelato in the case quietly outshines even the fanciest frozen scoops in Rome. Customers who ask what makes it taste so good almost always get the same answer: it's made with A2 milk from Alexandre Family Farm. And for Blake and Stephanie Alexandre, who founded the Crescent City farm back in 1992, that story is something they hear on a regular basis from gelato shops, coffee bars, toddler formula kitchens, and specialty grocers across the country.
The science behind the company's signature A2 organic milk is both elegant and, once understood, almost obvious. All cow's milk contains protein, roughly 80% of which is casein. Within that casein fraction, there are two variants of beta-casein, A1 and A2. Historically, cows produced only the A2 beta-casein protein, a structure that closely mirrors the primary protein found in human breast milk, as well as sheep's and goat's milk, making it naturally compatible with the human digestive system. At some point, a genetic mutation produced the A1 variant, and successive breeding over centuries gradually pushed that mutation into the global dairy herd. Today, the majority of commercially available milk is a mixture of both A1 and A2 beta-casein proteins.
