Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/111460
food&wine & Touring the artisan cheese scene in Australia, Patrick Haddock discovers we've come a long way from mass-produced cheddar on crackers. A ustralia's cheese scene used to be a barren landscape of bland cheddar, but now it's a smorgasbord of artisan cheeses made by talented cheesemakers who learnt their trade in Europe, brought the age-old techniques to Australia and fused them with a local sensibility. So much so that Australian cheesemakers are now creating a stink on the world stage and getting crowned for making some of the most impressive expressions of soft and hard cheeses. It wasn't until the mid '50s that Australian cheesemakers became ambitious and decided to offer more than just cheddar, and it wasn't until the mid '80s that there was an influx of the handcrafted and the unusual. We can attribute this to a relaxing of the laws; immigrants keen to replicate their cultural heritage; and a generation of young cheesemakers back from their European travels, eager to re-create some of the best examples of cheese with an antipodean twist. By 1994 the Australian Specialist Cheesemakers' Association was formed. It comprised a small body of cheesemakers specialising in the 'unsung hero' styles of mould-ripened white and blue cheeses, as well as washed-rind styles. Of the Australian regions that have popularised cheese, it's fair to say Tasmania and Victoria have emerged as shining examples, thanks to the proliferation of dairy farming. Yet NSW has also produced its fair share of boutique cheesemakers. One of those is Justin Telfer, of Bangalow Cheese Co., who fell into cheesemaking by accident. "I'd always had a love of cheese, for as long as I can remember, but becoming 29