Editor’s note: This story first appeared in Dish magazine.
Master of Cheese Will Studd wants to change the way you look at cheese – and quickly.
BY JOHN CORBETT. You may not have heard of Will Studd, but he says that doesn’t worry him: he would much rather you know more about the subject of his passion than about his own doings. And by the time the fourth series of his documentary series Cheese Slices concludes (the documentary series is currently rescreening on Choice TV in New Zealand), he may well have changed the way you look at cheese for good.
“I think this fourth series of Cheese Slices has been the most interesting to make,” he tells me over the phone from Melbourne where he is based. “It’s been tiring, but interesting.”
The tiring bit is understandable because, like its predecessors, the fourth series is a global odyssey. From the Azores to Japan and many points between, it explores the diversity of one of the world’s oldest man-made foods and the traditions and skills that go into making it. It makes for compelling television: in the northern mountains of Portugal, for example, Studd learns about Serra de Estrela, an ancient cheese that dates back to pre-Roman times and is still made from ewe’s milk curdled with the juice of cardoon thistles.
“They’re a noxious weed in Australia,” he explains, “but their juice is a wonderful setting agent and an excellent substitute for rennet in the days when animals were extremely valuable to traditional communities.”
In Italy, Studd discovers another ewe’s milk cheese that is matured in terracotta jars and in Sardinia, a curd cheese which undergoes the same process in a goat’s stomach. In Corsica, he is introduced to a traditional cheese covered with maggots. There is definitely a rustic feel to the fourth series.
“Looking back, it’s all about raw milk cheese, in every episode – which is not so strange considering that raw milk has been the medium of cheese making for several millennia. Pasteurisation only came along in the 19th century.”
In that regard, Studd is emphatic about his preference.
“Discovering the depth of flavours available in a well-made raw-milk cheese is rather like discovering colour television after years of black-and-white broadcasts,” he says. “It just tastes better.”
One of the heartening things about the fourth series of Cheese Slices is its coverage of the global revival of traditional and artisan cheese making, sometimes in surprising paces.
“The United States is usually thought of as the home of bland, mass-produced Swiss and Cheddar cheeses, but an extraordinary revolution in artisan and farmstead making has taken place there. In Canada, Québec also has a burgeoning new cheese movement based partly on the influence of the original French settlers.”
One of the most surprising episodes takes place in Japan, where Studd travelled with the Australian chef Tetsuya Wakuda to see whether the Japanese like cheese.
“Cheese is not an indigenous food for the Japanese, but their interest in French wine and food since the 1980s has produced some remarkable artisan developments. The Japanese are very curious about things and when they get into a subject they focus on doing it really well. In Japan I tasted a Caciocavallo traditional stretched curd cheese that was better than the ones we tried in the Campania region in Italy in episode three!”
For all of the good news about cheese making, the series also carries a note of warning.
“In a number of places, such as in Cyprus when we were filming one of the last farm producers still hand-making a fresh, mild whey cheese called Anari, you are very aware that people are not coming long to carry on the tradition. But it’s vital that these traditions are preserved so there is a legacy to follow in the future.”
It wasn’t so long ago, he adds, that champions such as Neal’s Yard Dairy in London (which is featured in episode one) helped save traditional English farmhouse cheeses from extinction.
Speaking of food champions, Studd is a bit of a one himself. In 2005 he won a long-running legal battle with the Australian Government to overturn a ban on the importation of some traditional raw-milk cheeses such as Roquefort. The win subsequently led to a review of the Australian and New Zealand food standards in this area.
Important sources in the food world speak of Studd highly. In 2005 the French Guilde des Fromagiers named him a Maître Fromagier (Master of Cheese) and he is the guild’s only “Ambassadeur”. Two years later the French Government awarded him its prestigious Ordre du Mérite Agricole (Agricultural Order of Merit) for his efforts in defence of traditional cheese.
Studd was also the inaugural chairman of the Australian Specialist Cheesemakers’ Association and partnered with Australian food doyenne Stephanie Alexander to open Richmond Hill Cafe and Cheese Larder in Melbourne. All of which is not bad, he admits, for the eldest child of a family of six, with no special background in food, who found himself managing a chain of delicatessens in London at the age of 22. His Australian wife was instrumental in his move down under in 1981 where, after a period of trepidation about Australia’s stringent import regulations, he decided to pursue the passion he had developed for cheese.
In the last three decades Studd has done much to expand the horizons of Australia’s (and the world’s) cheese industry: as a distributor and retailer of fine cheeses, as a mentor for cheese makers and as a media commentator and author.
But still, there’s the sense of urgency.
“If I want people to take away one thing from watching the series,” he says, “it’s the absolute importance of artisan traditions. We live in a world dominated by predictable industrial brands in which many cheese-making traditions nearly died out recently.
“Cheese is fundamentally about people and the passion and skill that they bring to creating it, and that’s why it’s so important that the incredible diversity of regional and artisan cheese is preserved. They’ve been there for ever. They’re part of our heritage.”
Photo: Cheese Slices