Australian cheese is top of the pops
A boutique outfit from South Gippsland has been named “supreme artisan” at the 2023 International Cheese and Dairy Awards, cementing Australia’s presence as a force to be reckoned with in the world of specialty cheese.
The awards, held this year at Staffordshire in the United Kingdom, attracted 5,500 entries from around the world.
Berrys Creek Gourmet Cheese won the prestigious Supreme Artisan Specialist Cheese award and is the first Australian company to do so in 125 years of the competition.
General manager, owner-director, and master cheesemaker Barry Charlton said his team entered four blue cheeses in the show, and they all won gold medals.
“Which then allowed us to be in the running for the supreme artisan cheese of the world,” he said.
As a serial winner of numerous national and international cheese awards, Mr Charlton said Australian cheesemakers had benefited from advances in technology with milk cultures.
He said Australia now had decades of experience making premium blue cheese, bries, and washed rinds, and its cheesemakers were taking their rightful place on the world stage.
After working in the cheese industry for 48 years, Mr Charlton and his partner Cheryl Hulls established Berrys Creek Gourmet Cheese in 2007.
“I’d worked for numerous companies and I’d had enough, so Cheryl came up with this crazy idea to start our own business and here we are today,” he said.
From humble beginnings at local produce markets, the company now makes about 60 tonnes of cheese per year, employing a dozen dedicated and diligent artisan cheesemakers, who take great pride in their work.
Situated at the picturesque Fish Creek, on a hillside overlooking Corner Inlet and Wilsons Prom, each day the operation’s cheesemakers begin their day at about 5:45am.
Its staff, comprised mostly of women, begin pasteurising refrigerated milk into vats that then cool down before cultures are added, forming bacteria to coagulate and set the milk.
The solid milk mass is then “cut” with a wire slicer, before enduring a “healing” process that shrinks and separates curds from the whey.
The curds are then stirred and agitated in the vat by hand with a stainless-steel squeegee, and scooped into round, sieve-like hoops where the excess liquid drains away.
This article was reproduced from the ABC website, 19 August 2023.