Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/111460
food&wine a cheesemaker was quite unexpected!" Justin recalls. "I was working in the casino industry, looking after private gaming players who were gambling millions of dollars, which I found quite soul destroying. "I'd always had a love of food and wanted to work in the food industry, but I didn't want to be a chef, and I had a desire to live regionally. One night, while working at the casino, I found myself pondering how I could link food and living regionally, and what I could do, when a waitress walked past carrying a large board of amazing-looking cheeses. Bang! There was my answer! I went home that night, Googled 'cheesemaking courses', and the rest, as they say, is history." Justin makes a range of cheeses that includes the styles he likes to eat. His cheeses have great flavour and integrity. "I have created all my own recipes and processes in an effort to make cheeses that are unique, instead of trying to mimic other styles or techniques," he says. Also in NSW is award-winning Binnorie Dairy started by Simon Gough, who introduced a generation to his wonderful marinated fetta and lauded labna – cheeses inspired by his trips abroad. Binnorie Dairy tries to capture the essence of the Hunter Valley region by using only local cows. As Simon points out, "Just as wine reflects its regionality, so does dairy produce." Indeed, you could speak of cheese, like wine, being the product of its terroir: the natural environment as determined by climate, topography, geology, hydrology and, in the case of dairy, the food or grass eaten by the animals and how they are kept. Take, for example, the hugely successful La Luna cheese made by Holy Goat Cheese in Sutton Grange, Victoria. Carla Meurs and Ann-Marie Monda run the farm according to biodynamic principles. The goats' hoofs and joints are treated homoeopathically and the animals are fed with barley that has been soaked for five days, which aids digestion. Supplements that the land can no longer provide are given to the goats to ensure "We are lucky in Australia to come to cheesemaking with no tradition to bind us. We can take inspiration from Europe [and] blend it with our technical advantage." 30