Cutting the curd

Cheese aficionado Louise Talbot, has been sharing her cheesemaking passion at Applegarth Farm Cookery School

- Natalie French

Having grown up on her family’s fourth-generation farm in South Canterbury, New Zealand, Louise Talbot, founder of Cutting the Curd Cheesemaking Classes, always had a natural affinity with the land. “We lived in a beautiful old timbered homestead on a hill, looking out over the Pacific Ocean,” she says. “Some of my happiest childhood memories include seeing Japanese squid boats lit up along the coastline in the evenings; taking huge trays of delicious home-cooked teas across to the shearing shed; helping in the sheep yards; and playing in Grandad Alexander’s milking parlour – walking patiently behind the cows as they returned to their field.”

Her passion for cheese was born in her home country: “New Zealand is a very rural country and we are a nation of home cooks,” says Louise. “Not long after I married my husband, almost 36 years ago, we decided to convert the farm into a dairy unit. It was very early in the days of conversions and the beginning of the incredible dairy boom to take over New Zealand. It is now almost one big dairy farm!”

As a trained teacher and self-confessed foodie, Louise has been making cheese for more than 20 years – after her sister arranged for a visiting cheesemaker to take a class and she was hooked.