Cheesy A wonderfully love story
With true artisan cheesemaking a dying skill, two master cheese-makers from Golden Bay tell Nina Hindmarsh why they’re determined to keep the traditional art from drowning in a sea of industrialisation.
When Alan Cockman learnt cheesemaking 40 years ago, he wasn’t allowed to touch anything in the factory. His only job for one year was to observe and taste the fresh milk every day.
At first, all he could taste was milk. But gradually, Cockman began to notice the subtle differences in the flavour and composition throughout the changing seasons: the aromas of different bacteria, all alive and present.
Back in those days, traditional cheese-making was still commonplace.
Cheese-making had always interested Cockman, originally from England. Before he learnt the subtle and complex craft, he started off as an electrician in cheese factories, before moving on to become a process engineer, where he soon discovered it was the dairy technology that fascinated him most.
He realised it was about ‘‘life’’, and inside a wheel of a cheese, a whole universe exists.
‘‘There’s something amazing about life, because the bacteria is the basis for everything we are. Without them, we wouldn’t exist,’’ he says.
Cockman will never forget his first day of work at the Clover Dairies in Durban, South Africa, and the moment this fascination really began. There was an old man with a rolled-up cigarette in the corner of his mouth, sitting on a wooden box at the milk reception.
The man communicated in grunts and a flick of the head, as the men off-loaded milk churns from a truck. He knocked the lid off the can and, using an old dipper, scooped out some raw milk and slurped it into his mouth, the cigarette still firmly between his lips.
After a moment’s contemplation, he then gave a slight nod or a shake, and the can would be either sent on its way to the processing plant, or rejected.
Cockman, curious, asked someone from the laboratory what the old man was doing. ‘‘He’s the milk-tester,’’ they said.
He learnt that, while the factory had a full laboratory, they still relied on this old man’s taste buds, despite the perpetual cigarette in the corner of his mouth.
With true artisan cheese-making gradually becoming a dying art in different cultures right around the globe, the surge of commercialisation, regulation and importation of branded cheese has driven many small cheese-makers out of business.
Today, the importance of ‘‘one’s nose and observations’’ is more important than ever, Cockman says.
It’s that basic understanding of a product you receive – not from a test you get back two weeks later – but from the aroma that hits the nostrils when you walk into the dairy shed or fromagerie. The brain instantly recognises which bacteria and moulds are alive and present, each vying for their own territory within a little universe.
Cockman and his partner, Gabrielle Kervella, are both master cheese-makers with 80 years of experience between them, and one of only three accredited raw cheese producers in the country. And it’s this resolve – to keep the age-old art alive – that propels them forward, even in their retirement.
From their tiny fromagerie built into a stainless steel-lined shipping container in East Takaka, Golden Bay, the couple create a range of handmade cheeses found nowhere else in New Zealand, under the name Kervella Cheese.
Forget generic cheeses – such as feta, camembert and gouda – Kervella Cheese has developed its own unique style, using ancient techniques from a bygone age. They refuse to name their products after those traditionally handmade and named in the foreign region where they originated.
Kervella is ahead of its time. In October, celebrity chef Simon Gault said Kiwi cheesemakers should stop trying to imitate European cheese and focus on producing uniquely New Zealand styles, after the European Union made plans to restrict the use of regional produce names.
Their cheese is enjoyed by the Golden Bay community and wider region, with their range of 10 soft-to-hard cheeses quickly snapped up by a steady stream of loyal customers, who appreciate the depth of flavour and health benefits of authentic artisan cheese.
A recently developed website now means cheese-lovers from all around the country can buy online and have the products couriered directly to them.
There’s the three ages of Pikiki hard cheese, originating from the rootstock of all hard cheese and dating back to pre-Roman times in Europe without a trace of modern bacteria; a white-blue cheese; and two raw milk varieties. By far their most popular cheese is Love, a semi soft white-rind cheese with a gooey centre.
Also popular is the Blanc, a young lush curd and alternative to sour cream and cream cheese, and the Amasi, a traditional fermented milk made from rare imported bacteria, used in lactose intolerant African countries for gut-health for thousands of years.
Their passion is to recreate the ‘‘lost cheeses’’ by collecting and mixing various wild cultures, bacteria, moulds and yeasts to bring out different flavours and depths, and the myriad complex biological processes taking place within the universe that is the wheel of cheese.
Forty years ago, Cockman says there were more than 290 strains of bacteria to choose from. Today,
‘‘Our cheese: no two are ever the same, they’re always random, but they’re imperfectly perfect.’’ Gabrielle Kervella
the generic cheese found at supermarkets – even many artisan varieties – are mostly made using just a handful of cultures from packet starters. ‘‘We’ve lost so much,’’ Cockman says. Kervella, his partner, learnt the craft in France – a country with centuries of cheese-making behind it – in the early 1980s when she was a fouryear apprentice of a master cheese-maker at a time when the skill was passed down through generations.
She then went on to adapt the art to the harsh West Australian conditions in 1984, and started the company on what was the Southern Hemisphere’s first biodynamic goat farm. This eventually culminated in her winning Australia’s best cheese award twice in the late 1990s.
‘‘I loved learning from the French, and the importance of your nose and your observations, so it was a completely different angle from going into a laboratory, which is very necessary these days with all the regulations, but has never really interested me.
‘‘I’ve just worked in the way people historically did.’’
Kervella is the daughter of Riwaka-born war hero General Sandy Thomas, and cheese-making is not the only skill she’s mastered. She was once a professional violinist, and has trained stallions in Arabia and rottweilers in South America.
The tumultuous journey on the West Australian farm was not easy. When Kervella came up against problems in her cheese-making due to the extremely dry climate and high temperatures, nobody in France could help her.
She was making up her own cultures from scratch, and just when she saw success in one batch, another issue would crop up. Kervella was continually walking across the paddock with buckets of failed curd and feeding them to the neighbours pigs; tears streaming down her cheeks.
But Kervella persevered and continued to learn as she went along, observing what worked and what didn’t; always passionate about the quality of the product and sustainable agriculture.
‘‘I was just determined that this was the way it was supposed to be; there wouldn’t be sprays on the land or drenches in the goats, and it evolved. There was an awful lot of errors along the way.’’
During that time, the amalgamation of Eastern and Western cuisine was taking place, and Australian chefs were starting to appreciate exotic foods. At first, people would ‘‘turn up their noses’’ to her cheese at the local farmers’ markets, having ‘‘horrid’’ memories of wild billy goats in the outback.
But over time, interest and appreciation for real cheese grew, until she was sending most of her product to be sold in Sydney. Kervella became a well-known cheese connoisseur in Australia and a judge at cheese-making competitions, including
France.
Kervella was a single mother running the farm and business on her own when she met Cockman, who had arrived from South Africa to explore new business opportunities. Cockman had been working as a raw milk cheese consultant for 20 years in South Africa where he designed and set-up dozens of successful cheese factories. He had not long recovered from an accident a few years earlier, where a tank of caustic soda exploded and his retina and most of his skin were burnt off. Initially left completely blind and having to be resuscitated, he had eventually gained some of his sight back but, after facing death, was left ‘‘completely changed inside’’.
With no social welfare system in South Africa, he was forced to pay for his own hospital bill, stripping him and his family of every last cent and everything they owned. He eventually built up another successful business but the accident had changed him. He sensed his time in South Africa was coming to an end.
Violence was erupting all over the country, and after a car-jack incident involving a gunfight where his finger was ripped off, he knew it was time.
While they started off as business partners, after the move with his wife and young children to Australia, where Kervella sponsored him, Cockman eventually separated from his wife. Cockman and Kervella wound up falling in love over raw goats cheese on the biodynamic farm.
Fourteen years ago, Kervella visited family in Golden Bay and fell in love with the region, returning two years later with Alan to put down roots in the totara-studded dairy pastures of East Takaka. They bought their four-hectare property at the feet of the Pikikirunga mountain range, with ‘‘great plans’’ to retire.
But they quickly discovered that their neighbours farmed cows sustainably using organic methods, remineralising pastures, cutting down on their herd, and treating the cows kindly.
They also learned that New Zealand allowed raw milk cheese – considered the ‘‘pinnacle’’ of traditional cheese by adding even more complexity and depth of flavour than pasteurised versions. The prospect was too irresistible to pass by.
Cockman designed and built their bespoke micro-fromagerie and factory from scratch and a newly-invigorated Kervella Cheese was born.
‘‘You go to most cheese factories, and they’re absolutely sterile,’’ Cockman says. ‘‘We have a very strict set of protocols we adhere to; we have to make sure surfaces are clean, and we test every month for listeria and salmonella and a whole range of others, but the environment is just bursting with life.’’
Cockman and Kervella mature all their cheeses together in one room using 80 per cent native atmospheric bacteria, yeasts and moulds – a practice almost unheard of in today’s modern world of cheese-making.
They say this creates an environment where all learn to live with one another in the delicate microbiome, each establishing its own turf in a sort-of warfare.
They’re passionate about nature’s bacteria – the good and those we consider ‘‘bad’’ – all are essential to achieve balance. ‘‘Nature has them there for a reason,’’ Cockman says. A cheesemaker’s job is just to encourage and bring out the good ones.
‘‘All the bacteria want to protect themselves from each other, and some will cross pollinate with others. It’s strange because you get a little blush of blue across one cheese and you think ‘oh no’, but then it will go away.’’
The couple believe we should go back to cheesemaking as an apprenticed profession, not a factory job. They also believe every town should have its own cheese-maker, and work with an enduring sense of responsibility to provide for the Golden Bay community and wider region; determined to prevent it from drowning in a sea of regulation and commercialisation.
And it’s literally a labour of love for the couple – who don’t draw any income from the business. Last year, 25 per cent of the costs went on compliance fees alone.
‘‘Cheese shouldn’t be so expensive,’’ Cockman says. ‘‘That’s another thing that sticks in our throats. We would love to sell them for cheaper, but the high cost and compliance means we can’t.
‘‘To be quite honest, the whole industry has become very remedial, it’s almost like you’re back to kindergarten to learn your ABCs. It’s not that it’s below us, but anyone can call themselves an ‘artisan’ cheese-maker today, just watching YouTube videos and starting a business, so it’s totally necessary.’’
Even if Kervella was twice the size, the compliance fees would still be the same – another thing that ‘‘sticks in their throats’’. Small cheesemakers in New Zealand are being stifled and driven out of business. Despite this, they refuse to expand.
‘‘We can’t keep up the quality if we get bigger,’’ Kervella says.
Cockman says they’re not trying to change the world, or to say that all cheeses should be like theirs.
‘‘We’re keeping our knowledge alive, and we’re not giving in to the industrialisation of cheese, although there’s a perfectly normal place for that,’’ he says.
‘‘Our cheese: no two are ever the same, they’re always random, but they’re imperfectly perfect.’’