An ode to cheese

Let’s get one thing straight: Producing cheese in India is not easy. Unsuitable weather conditions, the possibility of adulterated milk, an unreliable cold supply chain, and the Indian palate with its proclivity for processed versions are big hurdles for local cheese makers, whether they work from city homes or sprawling farms. And yet, over the past couple of years, the business has witnessed a quiet upheaval.

We have urban entrepreneurs introducing fresh cheese to an increasingly aware population; foreign players combining their techniques with local ingredients and flavours; and industry veterans trying something new with different retail channels or even creating their own types of cheese. They’ve used temperature-controlled units, tight quality control, and various outreach programmes to work around every challenge they’ve faced.

The result? A roster of businesses, big and small, that celebrate what India has to offer. To top it all, their products are without preservatives, emulsifiers, or animal rennet (an enzyme that coagulates milk). As a result, they may have a shorter shelf life—but we guarantee they won’t last nearly long enough.

Sohrab Chinoy: ABC Farms, Pune

In 40 years as a cheesemaker, Sohrab Chinoy knows this much: There’s a buyer for all types of cheese. Even for one called ‘stinky bishop’, which is so strong that he stored it in a thermocol box 100 ft away from his cheese board. “My cousin had brought it from England, and we sold it to a woman who requested a stinky cheese,” says Chinoy. It makes sense, then, that he makes over 70 varieties, and is now focusing on selling them directly to customers through their outlets in Pune, as opposed to restaurants and hotels. In fact, he’s even looking to set up a shop in Mumbai.

They make the typical cheddar, gouda, gruyère, and mozzarella at their unit in Koregaon Park, but they excel at the more obscure cheeses. Take the French morbier, in which rose petals are dried, burned to ash, and added to the cheese during the ripening stage, or those ripened in wood ash, red wine, or charcoal. “This year, there’s dragon fruit growing at the farm, so we thought of making a cheese with that. It lends a mild flavour. We also have an allspice plant, so why not incorporate that, too,” says Chinoy, who studied dairy technology in Germany, and now produces 200-300 kgs of cheese a day, with milk sourced from his 50 cows and two local suppliers. At any given time, he has in cold storage several tonnes of cheese.

Chinoy began cheese making in the 1980s, with “no clue how to manage people, products, the market”. All he wanted was to encourage people to enjoy natural cheeses. To that effect, he launched the ABC Farms Annual Cheese Festival, during which they not only hold tastings of varieties like cherry brandy and coffee, but also partner with wine companies and other farmers. The idea, he says, is to start with milder cheeses before moving on to sharper, more pungent ones. “Often they spit it out, rush to buy a bottle of water. But I just want them to experience different types of cheeses, expose them to what’s out there.”

Prateeksh Mehra and Agnay Mehra: The Spotted Cow Fromagerie, Mumbai

Like most good stories, this one begins with a keg. Prateeksh Mehra, a food photographer for 10 years, tried his hand at brewing beer at home, just as a hobby in 2014. Soon, he started pairing it with imported cheeses. “That’s when I realised that their texture and flavour were getting compromised by the time they reached Indian shelves,” he says. So he called up an aunt in New Jersey, ordered cultures, and turned his basement into a laboratory for cheese. What started as a fun experiment is now a bona fide business that produces over 250kg a month, and supplies to specialty stores and restaurants, like Salt Water Cafe and The Tasting Room in Mumbai.

If they have scaled up ten, even twenty fold in just their second year, it’s because Mehra had the advantage of knowing how to brew beer. “All fermentation is very similar,” says Mehra, who has converted the basement in his Dahisar bungalow into a production unit, complete with a temperature- and humidity-controlled ripening room and ageing zone. He knew, for instance, that diacetyl, a buttery note he certainly did not want in his beer, would be welcome in cheese. “Online you can learn what cultures are required for what type of cheese.”

The Spotted Cow Fromagerie makes three kinds of cheese—bombrie, camembay, and rombay—their versions of the French brie, camembert, and the Italian robioloa, that you can order directly from them. The turnaround time for these varieties is lesser than, say, cheddar, which is aged for about a year. Yet, “it’s a nightmare to make them. White mold starts growing on it, and it starts softening as it ages. The process of getting that gooey texture inside is very difficult,” says Mehra, who sources milk from farmers in and around Mumbai.

That they use no emulsifiers or preservatives means the shelf life of their cheeses is 21 days, not the year or so that tinned ones in the market offer. Because they’re soft varieties, one can’t grate them over pasta or melt them into chilli cheese toasts. But log on to the Spotted Cow’s website, and you’ll see storage instructions and a section for recipes, like a crumb-fried camembay, and baked brie with rosemary and garlic. “We got a chef on board and started developing recipes. Now, we are also in trials for new varieties of cheese.”

Mansoor Khan: Acres Wild, Coonoor

For Mansoor Khan, Bollywood was just a pit stop on the way to his real dream. He launched Aamir Khan in the blockbuster Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988) and made the cult film Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar (1992), but “running off and living on a farm was my first plan”. In 2003, that’s exactly what he did, moving to his house in Coonoor. From there began Acres Wild, a family-run cheese-making farm and farm stay.

For the first year he lived alone. “I wanted a bucolic life. Farm means cow, and cow means cheese.” But it was more than that. Cheese making was also a way to convince his wife Tina that she could do something useful in Coonoor. “Even before she moved here, I sent her literature. It was all on the internet. You can teach yourself anything; I don’t believe in structured learning too much.”

Now, together they run their five-bedroom farm stay with 10 hybrid Jersey Holstein cows. That’s where all their cheese (four to five kg a day) comes from. They make several varieties—including flavoured gouda, colby, cheddar, gruyère, smoked cheese, and softer ones like camembert, ricotta, halloumi, and a special white mold Acres Blanc—and don’t want to scale up in quantity. For one, cheese is only as good as the milk it’s made from—“it has to be whole fat fresh milk, not from a packet, not even a day old”—so outsourcing isn’t an option.

For Khan and his family, cheese making is part of sustainable living, not a money-making enterprise. In fact, they only retail out of a few stores in Conoor. Their income comes from room tariff. Each cottage is named after a type of cheese—colby, halloumi, and cheddar—and guests can explore the farm and take lessons in cheese making from Tina. There’s no room service and no television in the room, though each is equipped with soap that Khan himself makes. “The idea is to slow down,” says Khan. “The idea of perpetual growth has killed the planet.”

Hari Shankar: Kodai Dairy, Kodaikanal

When Hari Shankar took over a 46-year-old family dairy business, he went the opposite direction in terms of growth and scale. Over the past few years, not only has he reduced output from 1,50,000 litres a day to just 4,000, but also narrowed their extensive portfolio of cheese, choosing instead to start from scratch with his own varieties. One is the cambry, a white mold cheese, and coming up in the next few months is kodaizano, which is their take on parmesan.

“I want to focus on quality, given the dubious nature of milk from villages, where there is still potential for adulteration,” says Shankar, who procures 1,000 litres a day from suppliers within 20 kms of their 750-acre farm, where they have 750 Holstein Fresian cows. He’s travelled worldwide to learn about cheese and one thing he’s ascertained is that their uniqueness comes from the region where they’re made. “I’ve been to Edam, Gouda, Grana Padano, which is around Parmiggiana Reggiana… and each region wanted to hold on to their identity. Today all over the world they’re producing grana padano. Robbing their brand name isn’t fair, and the actual product bears no resemblance to it.”

Shankar now adapts international techniques to create cheese he can call his own. He’s roped in a consultant from Netherlands, one from Switzerland, who spends eight months of the year at their dairy, and recently one from Greece, to eventually diversify into goat and sheep milk feta. “It’s much tougher now but this is something I’m proud of, instead of chasing money and volume,” says Shankar, who studied food technology at Melbourne University. The smaller scale also allows him more control. While, through the company, he’s inherited imported equipment and the internationally-accepted HACCP certification, which prevents food contamination, maintaining quality continues to be a challenge.

“People don’t understand that they’ll make more money if they don’t mix water with milk. It’s a nightmare sometimes when you pay money to farmers and they don’t give you the milk because someone else made a better offer,” he says. “The dairy field is crazy, with 365 days of madness, but you have to make sure you’re consciously doing something that is right.”

Mansi Jasani: The Cheese Collective, Mumbai

“It was like Disneyland,” says Mansi Jasani, about Murray’s Cheese Shop in Manhattan. It’s what convinced her to drop out of her food studies programme at New York University so she could instead specialise in cheese. She volunteered with them, did a bootcamp, learning everything from milk chemistry to ageing cheese, and finally an affinage (the art of ageing cheese) internship, during which she spent three months in the caves below the shop, packing and wrapping cheese. “You take care of it as if it’s your child; it is still a living thing.” So when she eventually returned home to Mumbai in 2013, a career in cheese was inevitable.

She began as a cheesemonger, curating from producers across the country to sell to customers in Mumbai, before making fresh goat cheese from her home. Now, she’s setting up a unit in Lonavla, which begins operations next month. “I found amazing producers but didn’t know of anyone making fresh goat cheese. I want to wean people out of processed cheese, to make them appreciate the subtleties of flavour,” says Jasani, who sources pasteurised milk from a farm in Karnataka, and makes cheese rolled in herbs, chilli, or lemon zest, or moulded into bite-sized balls covered in cranberry and pistachio. Apart from household orders, Jasani even caters to parties, weddings, and corporate events—all it takes is a phone call.

Much of her focus is on education. She regularly hosts workshops, classes, cheese pairings, even blind tastings to explain the difference between artisanal and processed cheese for anyone who’s interested, at venues like studios and rooftop restaurants. More than just taste, her events also look at the history of particular cheeses, the stories behind their makers, how to cook with it or eat it. “India as a country loves flavour. You’ll see gouda in like 15 varieties, and that’s something I hope to change. It’s different when you put flavour on top of fresh cheese, but hard cheese has its own beauty. It’s a little nonsensical to have a wasabi gouda.”

Chris Zandee: Himalayan Cheese, Kashmir

Chris Zandee doesn’t define his business so much by numbers as its social and ecological impact. Though his brand produces 450-600 kgs a month of cheddar, kalari, and flavoured gouda, and supplies nationwide through an online store, Himalayan Cheese isn’t really about the cheese. It’s about the farmers they work with. “I came to India in search of doing something meaningful. I found a strong attraction to Kashmir, to serve and help the people here,” says Zandee, who is Dutch, and moved to India in 2003 after travelling across Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe.

When he set up in 2007, he had one goal: To bring social harmony. He’s trained and employed local farmers and their daughters to make cheese (a team of seven), they buy full cream milk directly from farmers, without middlemen, to guarantee fair prices, and they ensure that cows and buffaloes graze in a natural environment. Look at their website and you’ll see idyllic images of cows in the Himalayan meadows and river valleys. They simply pasteurise the milk, and prepare the cheese. “We don’t believe in NGO work (it has its place in society) but in sustainable business that contributes not only to its own existence but also to the people and ecology in its surroundings. You can make a micro society with great values and affect the start of a better world,” says Zandee, whose father was a farmer and made goat cheese as well. It is this background that influenced his work in the field.

While gouda and cheddar are relatively well-known, it is Himalayan Cheese’s kalari, a type of local cheese, that makes it stand out. Zandee recommends simply frying it in oil as the best way to enjoy it. “To see the farmers and milk production in Pahalgam, and their heritage of cheese [kalari]… I thought it would be a great base to extend this local skill, to help turn their high quality but under-appreciated milk into a product that is highly valued.”

Max Laederich: Mango Hill Cheese, Puducherry

If there’s one type of cheese that best describes Mango Hill, it’s their Le Pondicheri. A dry French cheese coated with South Indian curry leaves, it not only represents the heritage of the founders but also of the place they now call home. About five years ago, Frenchman Max Laederich and his family moved to India, and set up a boutique hotel and restaurant called Mango Hill, in the countryside between Auroville and Puducherry. The move also gave birth to Mango Hill cheese, of which 135kg in 10 varieties (including the garlic L’aisoon, soft borsalino, and cumin gouda) is produced each month.

“My great uncle used to make traditional French items like pâtés, sausages, and cheese. The cheese production here started as a side business to the hotel,” says Max Laederich, who grew up in Paris and learned cheese making from a French expert who had been working with Mango Hill a few years ago. Though he studied journalism, he travelled a year in Australia, working in farms and riding a bicycle across the country. When his family started the hotel, he landed in India—now, he’s part of a three-person cheese making team that includes his wife and a packing/cleaning lady. Though they source ferments from France, their milk comes from local villages, from a network of suppliers they developed through their friends. Their unit is in the hotel, and Laederich spends his morning making cheese; “it is a real game to experiment,” he says.

Benny and C Arumugam: La Ferme, Puducherry

C Arumugam hesitates to call La Ferme a business—much of what they produce is donated to Auroville, or sold there for no profit. But that hasn’t stopped them from scaling up. From processing 30 litres of milk a day, producing just mozzarella, without any storage capacity, they’ve now built capacity for 600 litres, introduced cheeses like gorgonzola, the piquant auroblochon, and the mild, nutty lofabu stocked at their factory outlet and specialty shops nationwide, like The Altitude Store in New Delhi.

“Everything belongs to Auroville, we just manage it day by day,” says Arumugam, who has been with La Ferme since 1988, its very beginning. His father, who at the time ran a dairy business, introduced him to the founder, and “the idea of starting a new unit from zero attracted me.” Today, he looks after more managerial aspects of the brand, like couriers, payment, and deliveries.

A lot changed when Benny, a Dutchman who had spent 25 years in a remote French farm, where he had his own orchard, vegetable garden, and cheese-making unit, decided to move to Auroville in 1999. Think newer varieties, larger quantities, a team of 20 for production. Yet the philosophy remains the same since its inception: They use biogas for pasteurisation and a windmill to pump water; they recycle waste water, source milk from domestic cows.

“We favour artisanal, handmade production, employment over mechanisation. I’m not business-oriented; I’m a hands-on cheesemaker,” says Benny, who first read about the city in a Dutch magazine called Hitweek, during the “time of yoga, Zen, Aldous Huxley, and Jack Kerouac”, then came across the stories of Sri Aurobindo, and felt an instant connection. “Instead of taking a bigger part of the market, I have trained people in cheesemaking who aim at socio-economic development in rural areas in India where it is needed.”

(This article first appeared in Harper's Bazaar)

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