Richard Thomas

June 1997

Richard Thomas is in pursuit of a smelly, mouldy, dirty blue coloured dream. It is to make a true tasting Italian style gorgonzola dolcelatte in Australia.

“I can remember talking to Bill Kirk after tasting my first gorgonzola. He was young and enthusiastic. I was young and stupid and thought you could make it. So his enthusiasm and my stupidity led us to get together to try. I left my quite steady job at Unigate and got into this business of trying to make clotted cream, trying to make blue cheese. It was tougher than I thought. Looking back now after 20 years of trying to make gorgonzola cheese I probably spiked and tasted 10,000 cheeses that I’ve made and only once at Milawa can I remember tasting a cheese and saying this could be a Gorgonzola. Only one cheese - not a batch of cheese. “

Richard Thomas has achieved extraordinary success with many cheese varieties in Australia. He has been in the cheese making business since graduating in dairy technology in the 70’s. Now he is frequently described as our best cheesemaker and certainly has an exceptional palate and passion for cheeses. He has developed bries at King Island and Kangaroo Island, sheep cheese at Meredith, washed rind at Milawa, blues at Gippsland (now Tarago River), clotted cream and goats cheese at Yarra Valley. All of these products are regarded as some of Australia’s finest cheeses. The Persian style fetta preserved in oil, garlic and herbs which he developed last year is very special and, what’s more, keeps well refrigerated in its shiny little tin under oil. Other gastronomic treats are Richard’s traditional goats cheese pyramids - plain and in ash and the “grabetto”, mini hard cheeses named by Franca, one of the dairy workers, and made as in her native Sicily.

Yarra Valley Dairy is set in the lush green Yarra Valley fields close to some of Victoria’s best vineyards. A visit there can be a one stop shop as Richard and his partners Leo and Mary Mooney also sell the wines of the region. Simple lunches, morning and afternoon teas (cakes and clotted cream) are other good reasons to visit.

But Richard is not content. Why can’t he make the gorgonzola he dreams of? “I don’t know what that is an admission of , I think it’s an acknowledgement of just how tricky the whole business is. We don’t yet quite respect or I haven’t even learned to make a factory and fit it out with air treatment equipment so that all the constants fall into place, more often than coincidentally . . I haven’t had the opportunity to control conditions in that way. It’s because we don’t have - particularly in the refrigeration, air treatment industry a full appreciation of how important the conditions are. In general, you go to an air-conditioning company and they just do not know, so that you are making cheeses where - the temperatures vary or they dry out or they get wet on the outside, or there’s too much air movement or - all of those things.

“I have to go back to Italy and find out really how do they engineer the conditions in these caves.

“I worked in the gorgonzola factories for about 8 months but I was looking at biological explanations for the elusive qualities. I worked principally at a place called Mario Costa in Novara in northern Italy, near Milan.

“I’d like to have one more crack at making gorgonzola before I die and I think that I’d get probably get fairly close to it.”

As well as fulfilling this personal cheesemaking challenge, Richard firmly believes that gorgonzola production in Australia would make great business sense. “Mario Costa make 500 tons of the best gorgonzola every year. It is massively profitable, premium cheese. There is no sacrifice in quality but it’s just a month to make that cheese.”

In the meantime Richard is very busy now, not only making cheeses at Yarra Valley Dairy but, due to the departure of the dairy’s van salesman, is on the road . “It’s really important to have one foot in the factory and one in the marketplace and work between the two. It’s really vital that I speak with chefs and others in the food industry because you get your head inside a cheese factory and you lose context”.

For those in the food industry a visit from Richard Thomas has always been instructive. He has never been less than passionate about his craft and is particularly passionate about the need for Australians to support the production of traditionally made cheeses.

“I don’t understand why we (Australians) are not out there trying to prove that we can make cheeses as well and as safely as the European artisans.”