Taste: Happy hives key to award-winning Hobart honey

TREATING produce the way nature intended has reaped delicious dividends for two of Tasmania’s best.

Antonia O'Brien has accepted a redundancy from the Health Department and is going to focus her efforts on the honey business she runs with her husband Robin, on the right,

TASMANIAN stars of the 10th delicious Produce Awards were there in person to receive their awards at the Bennelong restaurant at Sydney Opera House last night.

Jon and Lyndall Healey’s Pyengana Dairy Company was named Producer of the Year for its tasty cheddar (12+ months) as well as winning the From the Dairy, Artisan section.

And Robin and Antonia O’Brien were there to hear their Wellington Apiary Prickly Box Honey named winner of From the Earth, Artisan.

MORE: PYENGANA DAIRY NAMED PRODUCER OF THE YEAR IN 2015 DELICIOUS PRODUCE AWARDS

Pyengana tasty cheddar is made the same way cheese has been made in the Pyengana Valley in the northeast for more than 110 years.

Strictly speaking, it is a stirred-curd cheese rather than a cheddar. ‘But it’s my belief that this is the way cheddar cheese was first made because you don’t need any mechanical equipment to do it,” Jon has said.

Pyengana Dairy Company general manager Greg Gibson says making the cheese is still a physical job, and unlike the tin or galvanised iron implements of the past, stainless steel is used, the press is hydraulic and the milk pasteurised.

Jon’s grandfather made the traditional cheese of Pyengana, but his father did not, and when Jon wanted to learn there was no one to teach him. His brother organised for him a live-in apprenticeship in Gstaad, Switzerland, that lasted just six weeks until Jon was called back to Tasmania for spring milking.

He and Lyndall have been together since they were both 16, and she told me some years back: ‘Cheese was always his first love. When he came home from Switzerland, he had no tourist photos, just pictures cows and cheese and silage …” The first cheese factory (a cafe, Holy Cow, and underground cheese cellar have since been added) opened on St Valentine’s Day, 1992, and the first batch of cheese made the same day.

For a few months the cheese was made with raw milk until rules insisting on pasteurisation came in, but Jon said: “We don’t standardise the milk, we don’t take any cream out, we don’t put any calcium in, we just use it as it comes.” Jon now focuses on the big picture rather than the day-today and has trained James Startup and Clayton Sim as cheesemakers.

Greg says they are both ‘very passionate, very enthusiastic cheesemakers, which is good, because if it is not made with love and enthusiasm you just do not end up with the right product”.

Happy cows, which choose their own time to be milked, also help. ‘The cows love the machines, they are so much more placid and because they are happy they are actually yielding more milk,” Greg says.

Happy bees contributed also to the success of Robin and Antonia O’Brien at Wellington Apiary.

‘We have really productive hives because we have very happy bees,” Antonia says. ‘We tinker with them as little as possible.” The couple got into beekeeping only six years ago.

One hive in inner Hobart quickly became 20 and Wellington Apiary was born. Antonia is a lawyer who finished a 10-year public service career in April this year.

Robin has a degree in zoology and botany, which comes in handy, and was an emergency nurse at Royal Hobart Hospital for eight years.

Now he is a firefighter, working four days on and four days off. And they have two sons, aged two and four.

‘We absolutely love beekeeping, and like anything you love it’s not an effort,” Antonia says.

This summer they expect to run about 100 hives. In early summer it will be prickly box flowers for just four weeks, and they also place hives on Tony Scherer’s farm in the Coal River Valley. They have also found ‘a great new site”, Antonia says.

Yellow prickly box honey ‘begs for a hot buttered crumpet” says their website. Once bottled it sets firm with a fine crystal.

Others of the 15 Tasmanian finalist products from 10 producers to gain honourable mentions were medal winners Laran and Henriette Damen of Kindred Organics for their organic wholemeal buckwheat flour, and Michael and Christie Mcleod of Hazelbrae for their roasted hazelnuts.

See all the winners in Thursday’s delicious magazine.