The organic whey

Happy cows make good milk, and even better cheese.

It's a pleasure to watch John Smith's herd calmly line up to be milked before they head back to the lush pastures of Mepunga, near the Great Ocean Road.

Smith, a fifth-generation dairy farmer, turned organic about eight years ago. It's not an easy route, but it's one he believes in passionately. The result is his pastures are more varied and his cows' milk is full of flavour. When Timboon-based French cheesemaker Matthieu Megard was searching for a new milk supplier, Smith's rich, organic product proved irresistible.

Megard, a third-generation cheesemaker who reopened the Timboon cheese factory in Victoria's Western District about two years ago, is another man with vision. He wants to make a quintessential Australian cheese, one that has the unique taste and flavour of the area it comes from - just like a wine reflecting its terroir. His new organic mousseron cheese is a hand-crafted, semi-hard, mountain-style cheese.

''It's really up there with the great cheeses of Australia,'' chef Matt Wilkinson says. ''It's a different cheese to the classic mousseron of Switzerland and France. It's not a carbon copy, it's a very good version that's an Australian version.''

Megard moved to Australia five years ago. He believes our milk is better than European milk and our climate is more benign.

''The milk here is a fantastic quality and the butterfat as well,'' he says, adding that we need to give our cheeses a special Australian taste. He says using organic milk from a single herd is a good way to do that.

Smith says that since he adopted organic practices his 215-strong Jersey herd is healthier. Most animal problems are dealt with by using homoeopathic remedies, and antibiotics are administered only rarely.

His milk is taken to Timboon, 30 kilometres away, where it is made into L'Artisan cheeses by hand using traditional techniques that Megard learnt from his father and grandfather in the French Alps.

Bruce Symons, chief executive of Organic Dairy Farmers, is enthusiastic about the joint venture and the new cheese. ''It's a gourmet product created using the best organic milk,'' he says. ''For our farmers, it will showcase the truly unique aspects of their milk.''

Down the track, Megard plans to follow in the controversial footsteps of renowned cheesemaker Nick Haddow, of Bruny Island Cheese Company, and craft an Australian raw-milk, hard-cooked cheese to capture even better the taste of Timboon. ''The fact that we can't use raw milk is certainly a limit for what we can do as artisan cheesemakers,'' he says.

The mousseron will be in shops this month at about $50 a kilo. Outlets include Bill's Farm, Queen Victoria Market, and Hams and Bacon by Pope Joan, Brunswick.