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Tastefully raw cheese

December 1, 2003

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Black Label Double Brie cheese from King Island Dairy.
Picture: Domino Postiglione

The stoush over unpasteurised cheeses is running hot. John Newton wheys in.

Today, fellow cheese lovers, let's take a close look at a few misconceptions that have recently gained currency in the debate about whether Australia should be allowed to make and import raw milk (ie unpasteurised cheese).

The first: "You can't make really flavoursome cheese using pasteurised milk."

The second: "The French only eat cheese made with unpasteurised milk."

And the third: "Australian cheesemakers are frustrated because the law won't allow them to use unpasteurised milk."

These ideas have been circulated not by those making cheese, but by some of my journalist colleagues and some cheese sellers. To get the other side of the story, I've spoken to Australian cheesemakers.

Let me clear something up at the outset.

I am in favour of unpasteurised milk being used in Australia to make cheese under certain conditions, but whether or not milk is pasteurised is only one of a multitude of factors determining the quality of the cheese. Let's begin at the beginning.

Proposition 1: "You can't make really flavoursome cheese using pasteurised milk."

There are close analogies between wine making and cheesemaking. Both winemakers and cheesemakers shepherd a lot of little bugs into doing what they want them to do. To make wine, yeast is applied to fruit sugars to make carbon dioxide and ethanol. To make cheese, the medium is milk and the catalysts yeasts, bacteria and moulds.

Like winemakers, cheesemakers are artists using science to create flavour. Their importance in the process cannot be overestimated. Karen Borg, of Willowbrae Chevre Cheese in NSW, says: "Give 10 cheesemakers the same milk and the same cultures, and you'll get 10 completely different cheeses."

At Meredith Dairy in Victoria, Julie Cameron begins to shepherd the bugs in her milk before it is pasteurised.

"You can add flavour to any cheese by pre-ripening the milk," she says. "The night before (pasteurisation), you take it out of the vat, heat it to 12 degrees and add starter (culture) to it. The lactic bacteria in the raw milk gets going and creates enzymes which contribute to flavour."

Trevor Brandon, of Red Hill Cheese in Victoria, also ripens his milk, but he thermalises rather than pasteurises. Pasteurisation involves heating the milk to 72 degrees for 15 seconds, but as Trevor explains, "We heat the milk to 68 degrees for one minute, and we start off with organic milk - there's no bad flavours from chemicals or drenches and other things that can give off flavours."

Alan Cockman, cheesemaker at Kervella in WA, stresses the importance of a cheesemaker owning their own herd.

"The pasteurising debate is irrelevant, because it's the quality of milk you start with, whether unpasteurised or pasteurised. You have to know how to read your milk. That's why the best cheeses come from places where the animals, the farming methods and the soil are all part of the process."

Then there are the bugs - yeasts, bacteria and moulds added to the milk. Ueli Berger is the head cheese maker at King Island. Berger began making cheese in Switzerland, where, as he says, "we didn't know what a pasteuriser looked like". But today, "especially in the last few years, there are so many new cultures and yeasts coming out, the gap (between unpasteurised and pasteurised) is getting smaller and smaller".

Neil Willman, senior lecturer in cheese making at the Werribee campus of the University of Melbourne, has started experimenting with a new French coliform culture. "The French dairy technician Eric Spinnler was here in Australia not long ago," Willman says. "He was saying that even in France they have to look at ways of getting flavour back into their unpasteurised milk. They've cleaned it up so much they've lost what he called 'cowshed' flavours. This coliform bacteria is one way of putting those flavours back in."

Willman also put in a plea for maturation. "Flavour is about giving the microbes in the milk, or the ones you add to the milk, time to develop. Most of the white-mould cheese in Australia (brie and camembert styles) is wrapped after maturing for seven to 10 days and kept at 4 degrees. One of the things I learnt in Meaux (home of a famous brie) is that they mature, unwrapped, at 7 to 8 degrees, for six to eight weeks and are only wrapped when they're sold."

Proposition 2: "The French eat only cheese made with unpasteurised milk."

In France 90 per cent of cheese is made from pasteurised milk. Does that mean the Ponte l'Eveque we pay $77.50 a kilogram for or the Mont Segur at $70 (both pasteurised) are no good? Not a bit of it. As ardent unpasteurised cheese advocate Richard Thomas said a few years ago: "The French make some bloody good cheese in those big factories." Let me illustrate with two examples, not French, but Spanish. Cabrales is a blue cheese made in the mountains in northern Spain from unpasteurised milk, a monster blue that grabs your palate and shakes until it gives in. Valdeon, another blue cheese made at the southern edge of the same mountain range, a less intense cheese, is made from pasteurised milk. It's also delicious, but in a different way.

It is the milk, the cheesemakers, the cheese culture and an array of techniques that influence flavour.

Proposition 3: "Australian cheesemakers are frustrated because the law won't allow them to use unpasteurised milk."

The 60 members of the Australian Specialty Cheesemakers Association were asked in a survey late in 2002 whether they would be interested in making cheese from unpasteurised milk. Only three indicated they would. Why?

Cameron says: "Unfortunately, the cheeses I love to make don't sell that well. I'd love to make more blue cheese and white mould cheese, but commercial reality has dictated that we've become a yoghurt and marinated goat's cheese factory."

Cameron says of a French dairyman who worked at Meredith: "In France, he milked 200 goats, and 80 per cent of his income was government subsidy. We have to milk 1000 sheep - it takes five hours - to make it worthwhile because of the milkers' wages."

Camille Mortaud of Gympie Goat Cheese would love to use unpasteurised milk. He learnt to make goat's cheese in France from his mother. "Since I started selling my cheese in the markets," he says, "I've been getting a lot of requests for raw-milk cheese. I'm happy with the flavour of my cheese as it is, but I'd rather make it with unpasteurised milk. It would be cheaper and easier."

Jon Healy of Pyengana in Tasmania, who runs his own herd, says: "We milk our own cows and the quality assurance starts at grass roots. For us to nurture the milk into the factory and then heat it goes against everything we want to do. But it's also the huge cost. Our pasteuriser is a bit old and it'll cost about $150,000 to replace it."

But if we do change the rules to allow unpasteurised cheese production, Healy will face a new expense. Willman says that in Meaux, "nothing goes in untested, nothing comes out untested. In the factory I visited, they do 8000 tests a year."

If we are to go down that route, he says, "Certification of farms and cheesemakers would be absolutely critical. At Werribee I've started a qualification course called Master Cheesemaker in case the rules change."

But the most important person in this whole argument is you - the cheese lover. Go out there and demand more flavour in your cheese. Support the best Australian cheeses and harangue your cheese sellers until they stock them - in good condition. That way, you can get those Aussie cheesemakers whipping the bugs in milk into great shape.

Let your tastebuds decide.

Australian cheeses in top form

Milawa Cheese Company: goat camembert
Holy Goat: Veloute, semi-hard white mould goat's cheese
Emu Creek: Mount Elephant mature sheep cheese, Pecorino-style
Red Hill: Gunnamatta gold, a washed rind cow's milk
Maffra: cloth-wrapped cheddar and brie (scarce)
King Island:Black Label brie
Top Paddock: Jumbunna, a cow's milk blue
The following retailers sell a good variety of the best Australian cheeses in peak condition: Leo's in Kew and Heidelberg; Curds & Whey and Bill's Farm at Victoria Market; The Cheese Shop Deli and Pete & Rosie's at Prahran Market; Young's in Kew; Nick & Sue's at Camberwell; Richmond Hill Cafe & Larder; Simon Johnson, Toorak and Fitzroy.

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