The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Business is booming for cheese champ Jane
Every year at the Royal Highland Show, the Scottish Championships crown the cream of the crop across a range of dairy, bread and honey products.
St Andrews Farmhouse Cheese Company took gold for its traditional farmhouse Cheddar in 2021, having previously won a silver award.
Jane Stewart runs the company in the East Neuk of Fife, where her husband Robert, alongside sons Ben and Adam, farm their homebred herd of Friesian Holstein cows.
At this year’s Highland Show, you can see – and taste – their award-winning cheese among the other winners from the 2021
Scottish championships at a champion’s corner in the Scotland’s Larder food hall, which will offer a lunch menu composed of last year’s winning products.
Here, Jane explains how the business has changed over the years, what winning at the Highland Show means for them, and how they got into cheese-making in the first place.
Q.
A lot has changed since the last full Royal Highland Show took place in 2019. What has changed for St Andrews Farmhouse Cheese Company?
A. Since 2019, our cheese business has grown substantially, with ever increasing demand for our cheeses. I think that lockdown and Covid restrictions actually helped our business in some ways because, although people could not go out as normal, they still wanted to enjoy good food (and good cheese!). Farmers’ markets were well supported, and restaurants and online businesses offered bespoke at-home dining options, which included cheese. This introduced our cheeses to a whole new customer base who perhaps had not tasted it before, and so this gave us lots of extra business.
Covid restrictions also meant that we had to close our coffee shop, forcing us to look very carefully at the structure of our business. Due to the increased demand for our cheese and the lack of space to make it, we took the decision that the space would be better utilised to facilitate extra capacity for cheesemaking and maturation. The business is now productiononly, and that is proving to be the right path for us.
Q.
How do you ensure high standards are maintained?
A. High standards are part of everyday life when you are milking cows and making cheese – and as a family, we are involved in every aspect of it.
All of us are involved every day in the actual work of the business, and that family participation is what helps to ensure standards are maintained. We love what we do and it gives us huge satisfaction.
Q. In what ways do you think winning has impacted your business? A. I think that winning basically drives you forward to aim even higher. It also gives staff a sense of satisfaction and pride in the job that they do, knowing that they are involved in making an award-winning product.
Q.
You set up the cheesemaking side of your business in 2008 – what inspired the decision?
A. We set up our cheesemaking business when the price of milk was unsustainably low, and we had to consider whether, in fact, we would continue to keep cows at all. Adding value was the “buzz phrase”, and we thought that it would be satisfying (and hopefully profitable) to make something with the milk produced on the farm.
We love cheese (and we believe that it is important to actually enjoy eating the product that you make), so we thought that to make cheese would be rewarding. We totally underestimated the task that we were about to embark upon, but we have no regrets.
Q.
What are the benefits of entering the Scottish championships?
A. If you win, it is a great way to market your product. The judges are chosen from industry professionals and buyers, so this also helps to put your product in the spotlight.