 I thought it was in Cook's Illustrated that I read an article not so long ago about high percentage milk-fat butter. However, searching their site reveals nothing now, so maybe it wasn't in there (to use their online site, you must subscribe separately from their excellent magazine. Both are worth it, IMO).
Maybe it was this article in the Columbus Dispatch (free registration may be required) which contains this paragraph:
Often called dry butter by European pastry chefs, this butter has a higher percentage of fat and less moisture than standard butter. U.S. Department of Agriculture specifies that butter be 80 percent fat; Keller's is 82 percent fat, which supposedly means higher cakes, flakier pastries and more flavor.
and is about the name change of Plugra (which doesn't sound too good in English and means "more fat" in French!) to Keller's European Style Butter.
I'm pretty sure it wasn't at PCC, though the basic information I wanted to doublecheck is there:
Although 80 percent milk fat is the standard, many of the finest butters exceed this number and can often reach up to 86 percent milk fat. Even if one or two percent more fat sounds like a small difference, premium butters "perform" better in saut pans and mixing bowls. On the palate, they can have a more mouth-coating satiny feel. A higher fat content butter makes beautiful puff pastry, flaky pie crusts and higher standing cakes. This is due to the higher butterfat content and less moisture.
I read about William Dempster Hoard and his revolutionary approach to farming in the late 19th century, including this teaser:
On city streets, wagons carried battered cans of warm milk. A tin dipper was used to fill the housewives' pans and pitchers. Among the millions of multiplying bacteria in the milk were tubercle bacilli, Brucella abortus and many other human health hazards. Butter made from sour cream was of varying quality and often adulterated with beef tallow and vegetable fats.
Butter from sour cream? Yes! Before modern dairy practices, aka "factory farms", much butter was made from sour cream! Is it better? I think it is, but I'm not sure. I remember our crypto-Amish neighbors from when I was growing up. They had a truck patch and grew all their own food. They also had a sizable dairy herd and had milking machines even before they got a telephone or TV. There was always a plate of butter on their table, covered in the summer because of the many flies. Their son Leslie and I were the best of friends, we'd play hard outside and come in for a glass of water and maybe a cracker with butter. The best butter I've ever had. Nothing has ever matched it.
It was hand-churned and could have been sour cream butter. Other people remember this delicacy:
Churning was, admittedly, a monotonous job but it had one redeeming value--you could sit down and do it. I'd fill the one-gallon glass jar of my Daisy churn with thick sour cream--butter can be made from either sweet or sour cream but I preferred the flavor of butter made from sour cream.
Churning was the problem, you see. Butter from sour cream cannot be mass produced using continuous butter production, it clogs up the machinery. About all you can find is "sweet cream butter" which most people aren't allowed to eat anyway. I wonder if sour cream butter has a different type or amount of cholesterol. Probably not, anything that tastes that good has to be bad for you. Still, I'd like to taste it again. I have decided to eat very little butter, but when I do it better be the good stuff. Like that pictured above - minimum 82% milk-fat, low moisture. You can taste the difference.
1:11:16 PM 
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