New-wave cheese
Posted by Unknown in Australia, Cheese, Cheese Making, Goat Farming, Raw Milk, Recipe on Monday, 10 September 2012
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| Cheesemonger Richard Thomas: ''Every day that goes by I see an improvement,'' he says of the Australian industry. Photo: Eddie Jim |
While most Australian cheese has a reputation for being bland, a handful of cheesemakers are proving they can compete with their European counterparts.
EVERYONE'S talking about the two women who run a small goat farm in regional Victoria. In cheese circles, Carla Meurs and Ann-Marie Monda are regarded as possibly the best cheesemakers in the country. The pair, along with a handful of artisan cheesemakers around Australia, are proving that we can produce exciting specialist cheeses.
Experts such as Will Studd (founder of the Calendar Cheese company and host of TV's Cheese Slices) and Richard Thomas (founder of the famed Gippsland Blue) have long been frustrated by the local industry's rate of growth, and the bland, safe cheese that's been produced with an eye on supermarket shelf life. But now there are rumblings of a turning point, talk that a new generation - including Holy Goat's Meurs and Monda - is finally beginning to produce an Australian style.
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| Outspoken advocate of raw-milk cheese Will Studd. Photo: Angela Milne |
Holy Goat Organic Cheese is deemed every bit as good as its international counterparts, and better than many. It is Studd's favourite, while cheesemonger Laurie Gutteridge calls it a cheese ''you can wave a flag about''.
''This is Australian cheesemaking at its very best,'' says Gutteridge, founder of the TasteCheese website and consultancy, and cheesemonger at Giant Steps in Healesville.
''There are a handful of producers around the country who make exceptional world-class cheese but they are certainly few and far between. It's such a young industry and we do have the opportunity to do something wonderful with the right organisation to support small cheesemakers to think outside the box.''
Apart from Holy Goat, he commends Shaw River Buffalo Cheese, Bruny Island Cheese Company's range, Tongola (fresh and washed-rind goat cheeses), WA's Cambray Sheep Cheese, and Queenslander Fromart.
Thomas started Gippsland Blue in the 1980s and now works as a cheesemonger at De Bortoli Wines' Yarra Valley cellar door. ''Every day that goes by I see an improvement,'' he says. ''Not just in the production but a new culture is being born. The onus is not entirely on the farmer or the cheesemaker or the cheese merchant but a combination of the three working together.''
Names to look out for include: Jack Holman, cheesemaker at Mary and Leo Mooney's Yarra Valley Dairy, who won a grant to travel to France last year to study white-mould lactic curd-style cheeses such as Saint-Paulin and Saint-Marcellin; Frenchman Matthieu Megard re-opened the old Timboon cheese factory last year and is producing L'Artisan cheeses using Schulz organic milk; Sandy and Julie Cameron's Meredith Cheese is the largest on-farm producer of sheep and goats' milk in Australia; and Main Ridge Dairy is a cheesery on the Mornington Peninsula with a herd of 170 milking goats. Further afield in Queensland, unique hard cheese is handmade from the milk of a single herd of Jersey cows by Christian Nobel at Fromart cheesery, while in Tasmania, Healey's Pyengana continues to win plaudits.
Top Tasmanian cheesemaker Nick Haddow, of Bruny Island Cheese Company, says Australia is starting a long way behind the rest of the world. But he's upbeat about the future. ''We're a small population a long way away [from Europe] with not a great deal of history in cheesemaking compared to other places,'' says Haddow. ''What we are doing is exciting and generally of high quality. When you look at other new-world situations such as New Zealand or America, we stack up very well.''
Franck Beaurain, the head of the Australian Specialist Cheesemakers Association, is more effusive. He argues that Australian cheese is as good as its European equivalents. Beaurain, the cheesemaker at Jindi, is a big player who has recognised the demand for artisan cheeses, launching an award-winning upmarket range, Old Telegraph Road. He says there is a growing demand in Australia for stronger cheese, while the French are preferring milder ones.
Not always liked by smaller cheesemakers (it's a particularly divided industry), Beaurain is nonetheless widely admired for his cheesemaking skills. ''I was in France last week and the quality here is very comparable to there. Australia is definitely on the map for specialty cheese. We don't need to catch up, we are there with quality. But we'll never catch up with the tradition.''
But Studd disagrees. He says cheesemakers are special people doing a difficult job but still believes Australia is being left behind.
''When you put the flavour of international cheeses up against ours, often Australian cheeses don't stack up,'' he says.
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| Nick Haddow from the Bruny Island Cheese Company discovered it was possible to make raw cheese by following regulations carefully. |
Cheesemonger Anthony Femia says that within the country, it is Victoria and Tasmania that are leading the way for farmhouse cheeses. ''There are a few cheesemakers out there who are creating something to reflect our Australian terroir,'' says Femia, formerly a consultant at Richmond Hill Cafe and Larder.
''Too many cheesemakers are not educated enough to make something worthwhile. A lot of them are just making standardised brie and feta.''
He loves Holy Goat, Capra Organic Goats Cheese, Red Hill Cheese, Tarago River, Bruny Island, Pyengana Cheese, Bangalow Cheese, Woodside, Meredith and Jindi.
Marieke Ferdinands, cheese educator and manager at distributor Calendar Cheese Company, says what Australia really needs is more hard cheese. ''It's easier to make money from soft cheeses than hard cheeses, which take months or years to mature,'' says Ferdinands. She has encountered a growing demand for local cheeses, but maintains that imported benchmark cheeses are important because they push local prosucers to improve.
Prices for specialist Australian cheeses start at about $50 a kilogram, compared with about $80 a kilogram for imports. The best of the locals, such as Holy Goat, can cost about $120 a kilogram. Bill Tzimas, of Bill's Farm at Queen Victoria Market, says customers are willing to pay if the quality is there. ''It's a turning point,'' says Tzimas, a qualified cheese grader and judge for the Australian Dairy Awards. ''We are seeing quality Australian cheeses come through and it's an exciting time.''
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Happy goats
ALL the goats at Carla Meurs and Ann-Marie Monda's Sutton Grange farm have names and personalities. Some are cheeky, some naughty and some skirt around bleating for attention. Soul sisters Meurs and Monda had a dream to be leading cheesemakers and, after years of travel and study, they've made that happen with Holy Goat. A shared passion, long hours, well-honed cheesemaking skills and a 100-strong herd of happy goats means they now produce one of the most innovative ranges of cheeses in Australia.
At their bucolic 80-hectare organic holding near Castlemaine, they spend seven days milking goats and making cheese. Home is a simple cottage with views of Mount Alexander, the cheesery a purpose-built shed. Twice a day the goats are milked, 12 at a time, ensuring that the freshest milk is pumped straight into the cheesery. The women, who trained with renowned cheesemaker Gabrielle Kervella in WA and worked in cheeseries in Europe, make eight French-style Holy Goat cheeses, including the acclaimed La Luna. The cheeses are made by hand using the traditional soft curd-style of slow lactic acid fermentation.
Bankers were sceptical about the two women who wanted to make goats' cheese but their timing, which coincided with the rise of farmers' markets, ensured their initial success in 2003. They now employ four others on the farm.
The pair, who have won many awards, believe Australian cheesemakers should take inspiration from their European counterparts. ''We are producing too much soft cheese, too much camembert and brie, and not being innovative enough. People should take advantage of being small producers to make more interesting cheeses.''
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The experts select ...
Will Studd's top five
■Holy Goat La Luna (Vic)
■Healeys Pyengana (Tas)
■Bruny Island C2 (Tas)
■Gympie Farmhouse Chevre (Qld)
■Shaw River Mozzarella (Vic, above)
Our cheesemongers' top picks
Vic: Capra organic goats' cheese, Holy Goat organic cheese, Jindi Old Telegraph Road, La Latteria, Meredith Dairy, Red Hill Cheese, Shaw River Buffalo Cheese, Tarago River.
Tas: Bruny Island Cheese Company, Heidi Farm Cheese, Healey's Pyengana, Tongola Goat Products.
SA: Woodside Cheese Wrights.
WA: Cambray Sheep Cheese.
Qld: Fromart.
NSW: Bangalow Cheese.
And, look out for: Holy Goat is working on an organic 80 per cent cows' milk, 20 per cent goats' milk, possibly to be called Shorthorn or Cowboy; Bruny Island's Nick Haddow will release a cheese with local truffles; Franck Beaurain of Jindi's Old Telegraph Road is developing two cheeses, one a semi-hard gruyere-style cheese with ash in the middle and another port salut-style.
