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The blue cheese that people flock to taste

Richard Cornish
Richard Cornish

Bronwyn and Burke Brandon of Prom Country Cheese at their farm in Moyarra.
Bronwyn and Burke Brandon of Prom Country Cheese at their farm in Moyarra.Richard Cornish

The soil in South Gippsland is incredibly rich, the topsoil almost a metre deep in places. Combined with almost a metre of rainfall every year, the pastures are so lush here you can almost hear the grass grow.

Somewhere down a winding road in Moyarra, between Korumburra and the Bass Strait Coast, cheesemakers Burke and Bronwyn Brandon tend a flock of dairy sheep, a jumble of breeds selected for particular qualities. The sheep need feet strong enough to withstand the wet conditions, must be good mothers, produce excellent milk and have a docile temperament.

"You don't need bad-tempered animals in a milking flock," says Burke nursing a shoulder that was reconstructed after a cantankerous young ewe helped tear his ligaments apart a few months back.

Venus Blue sheep's milk cheese has won plenty of plaudits.
Venus Blue sheep's milk cheese has won plenty of plaudits.Richard Cornish
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He rounds up the sheep with his dog, Whistler. It is more peaceful than using a quad bike. The pasture underfoot is a mixture of broad-leaved plants such as clovers, dock and plantain. "These have deep roots that bring up minerals from further down the soil profile," explains Burke. "The sheep seek out different plants depending on what they need."

The Brandons are minimal-interventionist cheesemakers. "Some people call that lazy," he jokes. They do as little as possible in every aspect of the cheese-making to help let the quality of the milk shine.

In a purpose-built dairy on this 80-hectare farm, the Brandons make some of the best cheeses in the country: soft curd, washed rind, soft brie-like cheeses and harder aged cheeses marketed under the Prom Country Cheese label. But it is their Venus Blue, a blue vein cheese named after the coastal town of Venus Bay a few kilometres away, that is getting most of the plaudits – it has picked up several awards, including Champion Dairy Product at the Australian Food Awards 2016 and Goat, Sheep and Buffalo Champion in the 2017 Grand Dairy Awards.

This farm is all about happy and healthy animals.

It's made with milk that was gently pasteurised then inoculated with a mix of lactic acid bacteria and Leuconostoc mesenteroides, one of the bacteria strains often found in milk kefir and sauerkraut. He also adds Penicillium roqueforti, the mould that adds the distinctive sharp and rich flavour and characteristic streaks to blue cheese. Burke has previously used bacterial culture isolated from his own raw milk to make the cheese and understands of the power the microbial world has over the end product.

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"What is in the environment [where cheese is made], it will express itself in the cheese," he says. "We can introduce a culture in the millions, but if the conditions are not right for it, you will still end up with what is in the environment."

Once pasteurised and inoculated with cultures, the curds are hand-stirred, hooped into moulds and salted with Olsson's sea salt. "The objective is to keep the curds nice and open," says Burke, a second-generation cheesemaker. "We want the blue mould to use the space between the curds to grow naturally, as opposed to mechanically putting lots of holes in the cheese."

The Brandons prize milk quality over quantity so allow their ewes to dry off over autumn when the pasture growth slows. Lambing coincides with spring when the pastures reinvigorate.

"This farm is all about happy and healthy animals – and this shows in the quality of the milk," says Bronwyn.

Once the sheep are milked, Burke and Bronwyn gently pump the milk into a small tanker they drive slowly from the milking shed to the dairy. The milk is then gravity fed into the dairy. It's a time-consuming process, says Burke, but the milk is very delicate and when agitated, enzymes can break up the fat particles and the fat can start to oxidise.

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We wander past a large refrigerated shipping container. Inside are hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Venus Blue quietly aging. The cheeses spend a month in a maturing room, where they are washed with brine. Naturally occurring brevi bacterium – the type found on washed rind cheeses such as taleggio – gives the rinds a peachy hue.

The cheeses are then wrapped in foil and stored for a minimum of four months, over which time the fats break down giving the cheese its distinctive flavour and texture. The result are two-kilogram wheels with a firm apricot-coloured rind. The cream-coloured interior is streaked with veins of grey-blue mould like fine marble.

Firm to begin with, Venus Blue develops a lovely creamy texture with the pleasant aroma of fresh milk flooding the senses, followed by the punchy rich tang of the blue mould, a lush, slightly caramel sweetness at the finish.

"This is the best of the mid-summer milk that has been turned into something that can be enjoyed months later," says Burke. "It is a real seasonal product. We could make them faster but you wouldn't get that flavour and quality."

Prom Country Cheese makes a range of other cheeses, some using cow's milk from a neighbour's farm. They can be tasted for $10 at the farm gate or as an eight-cheese platter with bread, local preserved meat and pickles for $38. The cheeses are also available at the Spring Street Grocer, Melbourne; Leo's Supermarkets; Terra Madre, Northcote; Red Hill Cellar and Pantry; and Tully's Corner Produce Store, Moorooduc.

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Open Sat-Sun 10am-5pm from September to June.

275 Andersons Inlet Road, Moyarra, 03 5657 3338, promcountrycheese.com.au

Richard CornishRichard Cornish writes about food, drinks and producers for Good Food.

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