Australian Grand Dairy Awards 2020: Gippsland cheese producer wins top prize

Some of the biggest names in the Australian dairy industry were beaten for the title of the nation’s top cheesemaker by a small Gippsland operation.

Grand champion: Berrys Creek Cheese owners Barry Charlton and Cheryl Hulls in their cheese storage room with their winning Oak Blue Cheese from this year’s Grand Dairy Awards. Picture: Dannika Bonser

ROLL over roquefort and tell gorgonzola the news: there’s a newly acclaimed blue cheese on the world stage and it hails from South Gippsland.

The Oak Blue from Berrys Creek Gourmet Cheese was named cheese grand champion at the Australian Grand Dairy Awards, beating the best of the best.

Barry Charlton and Cheryl Hulls established the cheese factory at Fish Creek in 2007, and after a few bumpy years as fledgling cheesemakers, they started picking up awards at home and abroad.

“I started my career in 1976 making vintage cheddar cheese through a co-­operative butter factory in Drouin,” Mr Charlton said.

“The bulk of my career was spent at Jindi Cheese — 17 years. It became quite a big company and it was changing management, so I thought ‘I need to make a change in life.’

“So I spoke to my partner, Cheryl. I said, ‘We need to make a change’ and she said, ‘Why don’t we start our own business?”

While Mr Charlton was skilled at making all types of cheese, he was a novice at the variety that would make the Berrys Creek name when he and Ms Hulls started the venture.

“I’d never made blue cheese in my life,” he said. “I developed the first one in the kitchen at home — tasted good, looked good. I thought: there’s potential here.”

That potential took time to develop, with the Fish Creek factory’s formative years bludgeoned by the 2008-09 recession.

“I’ll be honest, after the first three years, I could have sat in a corner and cried because of the overdraft, couldn’t pay people, the company looked like it was going to fold up,” he said.

“We were going to lose everything — house, car. But we stuck at it, went out and contacted wholesalers. All the wholesalers in Melbourne were really supportive, particularly with the feedback they were getting about our cheese. It only started taking off when we started to win a few awards here and there.”

Victoria was the biggest winner at last week’s Australian Grand Dairy Awards with seven product wins. While Berrys Creek won best of the best in cheese, the other grand champion title for non-cheese dairy went to the Cobden-produced ­Western Star butter.