Dalewood Cheese

Huguenot cheese from Dalewood.

Rob Visser’s farm is literally round the corner from The Table at de Meye. I first met him and his wife Petrina while shooting images of their range of cheeses for their website. It was then that I was introduced to their exceptional Huguenot cheese.

Despite the fact that is has won a double gold at the world cheese awards in France, this cheese is produced on a small farm in a very artisanal way. They milk their own herd of pastured Jersey cows and make the cheese on their farm near Franschhoek. It’s a proper, small dairy farm where the cows are cherished and fed their natural diet so they produce stunning milk for cheese making. They never receive growth or milk-production hormones, nor do they receive any unnecessary antibiotics.

Rob Visser with a staff member on Dalewood farm.

The pastures are carefully managed in every aspect, right from nurturing of the biological life in the soil. The pastures are not artificially enhanced in any way – there is no trace of chemical fertiliser, insecticide or week killer in the earth.

The farm itself looks like it belongs in a book. Lush and green, surrounded by world-famous vineyards. Fawn coloured cows with soft coats and long eyelashes graze comfortably in the lush pastures. It’s just gorgeous.

Jersey cows in the pastures on Dalewood farm.

Rob’s father was a dairy farmer, and Rob is the second generation of the Visser family to farm on Dalewood. After studying, he went travelling for a year, mainly in France where he started learning about cheese.

“I was so inspired by all of the wonderful cheeses that I had seen in Europe”, he says. “I liked the ‘area-boundedness’ of French cheese, and wanted to create an equivalent South African cheese from this area”. Just as wine makers speak of the terroir, there is a very similar aspect to cheese. Cheese is the product of the milk, which is in turn a product of the  environment in which it is made.

So many aspects need to be taken into account, like the climate and the diet of the cows, not to mention the way in which the cheese is matured. There is an infinite number of factors that determine what a cheese will taste like, and this is often misunderstood, especially in the South African market which is relatively uneducated when it comes to cheese.

It’s taken a number of years to get the market interested in Huguenot, but now it is one of the most sought-after cheeses in the country. It is the most highly awarded cheese in South Africa, and has received major accolades around the world. Importantly, it is a specifically South African cheese.  It can be explained as something between an Abondance and a Beaufort, but although the styles may be similar, it is a completely unique cheese.

Jersey calves are left in comfy little stalls while their mothers are milked

Because of the love that goes into its production, and because it is frankly delicious, we are proud to feature Dalewood’s Huguenot on our cheese board. We will also introduce some of their other excellent cheeses, like the Wineland Blue Camembert or a superlative Brie to the board.

For more on Dalewood: www.dalewood.co.za

Dalewood

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