February 19, 2007 11:00pm
Courier MailDIANE Rae turns down the volume on the Dixie Chicks to pause for a chat.
When she's hard at work in the family's Grandvewe Farm Cheesery there's always music pumping to help pass the time. "It's Linda Ronstadt when we're making the Blue By Ewe," she says with a laugh.A set-up called Grandvewe, cheeses with names such as Blue By Ewe, Camembaaa and Ewe Bewety – no prizes for guessing that this is a sheeps milk enterprise.
Former Queenslanders Rae, 50, and her partner Alan Irish, 58, established their organic dairy, cheesery and a vineyard in Tasmania five years ago, on a 15 ha property at Birchs Bay, about 30 minutes drive south of Hobart.
Rae's two children, Nicole Gilliver, 30, and Ryan Hartshorn, 22, have since joined them as partners in the business, with Gilliver, a former wine rep, learning the cheesemaking and winemaking ropes, and Hartshorn handling marketing, website, packaging and label design.
Grandvewe is one of only four sheep dairying enterprises in Australia and the family is having trouble keeping up with demand. "We're busier than we've ever been in our lives. It's certainly exceeded all my expectations," says Rae, who in 2004 was named Tasmanian Rural Woman of the Year and last year took home Telstra's Australian Government Business Innovation Award.
Prior to their move to Tassie, Rae and Irish had already made one "green" change in their lives: early in 1995 they'd swapped Brisbane's urban sprawl for the fresh mountain air of Maleny in the Sunshine Coast hinterland and established an organic market garden.
"I think I had a mid-life crisis early," says Rae, who before that had trodden a career path from Queensland Health psychologist, to financial planner, fund manager and director of Trident Securities, then on to running environmental festivals and a natural therapy centre. "In Maleny we got a few house cows and started milking them. I thought 'What can I do with the milk?', so I bought a book, Home Cheesemaking by Carole Willman, and gave that a go. We did home delivery of boxes of fruit and veg and cheese," she says.
When the couple settled in Tasmania, sheep and cheese didn't immediately figure in their plans. Irish, a solicitor who'd had enough of practising law, was interested in establishing a vineyard and winery. Rae did the sums and calculated that they'd need an additional and more immediate income stream, so came up with the idea of a sheep dairy and cheesemaking operation in tandem with a vineyard.
She furthered her cheesemaking skills at the University of Melbourne, and together with Irish designed the cheesery and cellar door. Wines to date have been made off-site (under the Grandview label), but a winery is in the pipeline.
From day one the couple chose to go organic because, Rae says, "that's part of who we are".
"We were organically certified in the beginning, but we're not now. It costs several thousand dollars and it wasn't translating for us in a marketing sense," she says.
About 20,000 litres of milk a season is produced from a flock of 100 East Friesian ewes, and Rae makes about 15 different styles of cheeses including pecorino; a Spanish manchego style called Primavera (the most popular); Roquefort-style Blue by Ewe; haloumi; a lightly pressed fresh curd called Birchs Bay Blonde; and Ewe Bewety, her adaptation of reblochon and camembert recipes. She's hoping to expand her repertoire when she returns from a six-week tour of sheep cheese operations in Europe this year, with the help of a Federal Government scholarship.
Most of the cheese sales are at cellar door, but as word spreads and the awards keep coming – at last count a gold and three silver medals at the Australian Dairy Awards – the mail order business is growing (60 per cent of orders are to Queensland). The cheeses also are supplied to selected retailers and top-end restaurants in Hobart and Melbourne. "We are a bit prima donna about them I suppose," Rae says. "We only want the cheese to go to outlets where they know how to store it and what to do with it."
This year, Gilliver says, they're planning to start supplying retailers and restaurants in Queensland and may hold a workshop and "meet the cheesemaker" evening in Brisbane.
They also hope to have their three flavours of sheep milk gelato (vanilla bean, pistachio and macadamia, and roasted wattleseed) distributed nationally and intend to expand their gourmet grape range, including verjuice, vincotto and a pinot paste.
Grandvewe Cheeses, ph: (03) 6267 4099; www.grandvewe.com. For more on Tasmania see the colour liftout in next Tuesday's Courier-Mail