The first Meredith Dairy cheese was made in August 1991: fifty unpasteurised sheep-milk blues, in a converted shipping container on a farm about 100 kilometres west of Melbourne. Thirty-five years later the same family milks around 10,000 goats and 2,000 sheep, and the jar of marinated goat cheese in our fridge is arguably the best-known cheese in the country.
That jar gets most of the attention, but the range is wider and easy to get wrong: fresh chèvres in four flavours, marinated cheese in three sizes, and six yoghurts split between sheep milk and goat milk and between two cultures. Here is the farm story, how a fresh goat cheese is made, how goat milk and sheep milk behave differently in the kitchen, and what to do with the oil left in the bottom of the jar.
A vet, a nurse and the end of the wool floor price
Sandy Cameron trained as a veterinarian and Julie Cameron was an intensive-care nurse. They left city jobs to farm at Meredith, between Geelong and Ballarat, in 1989. Two years later the wool floor price was abolished and, in Julie's words, traditional farming was in turmoil. A chance conversation with the cheesemaker Richard Thomas pointed them towards milking sheep. "We felt we had to move away from producing commodity products," Julie has said, "so we could have some say in the returns of our produce."
The first goats arrived in 1995. The business is still family-owned, with the Camerons' son Angus as marketing manager. By 2024, according to the Stock Journal, it ran about 10,000 dairy goats and 2,000 dairy sheep across nine farms, with more than 150 staff from 24 countries. The animals are milked daily and the milk is turned into cheese and yoghurt the same day, on a farm that grows its own wheat, barley and fodder.
Two things worth saying plainly. Meredith is not certified organic and does not claim to be. And it is not carbon neutral, by its own account: the family says the farm's methane has to be measured first. What they do have is 100 kW of solar on the sheds, a biomass boiler burning farm-grown timber in place of natural gas, whey fed back to the animals and around 300 hectares set aside for conservation. In April 2019 the whole operation won the Royal Agricultural Society of NSW President's Medal, an award for the business rather than a single cheese.
How a fresh chèvre is made
A fresh goat cheese is a lactic-set curd, a different thing from most cheeses you slice. The pasteurised milk is cooled to roughly room temperature, inoculated with a culture and only a few drops of rennet, then left for 18 to 24 hours. The curd forms mainly because the culture converts lactose to lactic acid and the pH drops to about 4.8, not because the rennet has done much. A lactic curd is weak, so it is drained gently in cloth or small moulds with no pressing, then salted. That is why chèvre is soft, spreadable and a little crumbly, and why it melts into a sauce instead of stretching.
The ash-dusted version follows a Loire Valley habit, where cheesemakers once burned grapevine clippings and dusted the ash over the curd; today it is food-grade vegetable ash mixed with salt. On a fresh chèvre it is mostly about looks and a mild contrast in flavour.
The marinated cheese is made differently on purpose. According to the Camerons, it uses about ten times the rennet of a feta, giving a denser curd that is a little more crumbly and squeaky. Salt goes in when the cheese is pressed rather than by brining, and the cubes are then submerged in oil, which keeps air away. In 2018 the family stopped calling it feta, ahead of European demands over the name. "We're not going to call it feta because it's not feta," Julie said at the time.
Goat milk and sheep milk in the kitchen
The numbers explain most of the difference. Goat milk is about 4.5 per cent fat and 3.6 per cent protein, close to cow's milk. Sheep milk is about 7.5 per cent fat and 5.6 per cent protein, with far more total solids. Set sheep milk as yoghurt and it comes out firm without any thickener.
Flavour is the other half. Goat milk is higher in three medium-chain fatty acids, caproic, caprylic and capric, all named after the goat, and they give the tangy note people call goaty. That note gets stronger with rough handling, which is one reason freezing a fresh goat cheese is a bad idea. Sheep milk reads as buttery, sweet and slightly nutty. Both make bright white cheeses rather than cream-coloured ones, because neither milk carries the beta-carotene that colours cow's milk fat. In practice, sheep yoghurt holds up in sauces and marinades, and goat yoghurt is thinner and tangier and suits dressings and drinks.
The chèvres we stock
Fresh Chèvre Original 150g is the plain one, at $8.99, with an 80g log for $5.50 if you only need it for one dish. It is the version to crumble over roast beetroot, spread on toast under honey and walnuts, or whisk into a pan sauce at the end. The Chèvre Dusted with Ash 150g is $9.95 and is the one for a cheese board.
The Chèvre with Fresh Dill 150g ($8.99, also in an 80g size) suits smoked fish, cucumber and rye. The Chèvre with Australian Native Pepperberry 150g, $8.99, has a purple hue from the berries and a warm, peppery finish that works with lamb. We also carry a Whipped Goat Cheese 100g tub at $5.60, the lightest of the lot for spreading.
The marinated cheese, and what to do with the oil
The label on the jar reads: pasteurised goat milk, canola oil (GMO free), extra virgin olive oil, peppercorns, fresh thyme, garlic, salt, non-animal rennet, cultures. So the oil is a blend, not straight olive oil, and the rennet is vegetarian. It contains milk, and fresh garlic, which matters to some people.
It comes in three sizes: Marinated Goat Cheese 100g for $5.50, the 320g jar for $13.70, and the 550g jar for $24.95. The cubes go into salads, onto pizza after it leaves the oven, into omelettes and on toast. The maker's one storage instruction is to keep the cheese submerged in the oil after opening. Keep it in the fridge and use it by the best-before date; if cubes have sat above the oil and dried or discoloured, discard them. Meredith does not publish a number of days once opened, so we will not invent one.
The oil is the part people throw away and should not. It is olive and canola infused with garlic, thyme and pepper, plus a little whey, and it makes a dressing on its own with a squeeze of lemon. Toss it through hot potatoes, drizzle it over fried eggs, brush it on bread before grilling, or roast vegetables in it. Keep it in the fridge, because of the garlic and dairy in it; it will cloud and set in the cold and clear again on the bench.
Which yoghurt for what
All six yoghurts are pot-set and unhomogenised, with no added sugar, thickeners, preservatives or artificial flavours. The ingredient list is two items: pasteurised milk and live yoghurt cultures. They contain milk, and are best eaten within seven days of opening.
The blue-label Sheep Milk Yoghurt Traditional Greek 500g ($8.25) is set with traditional Greek cultures. It is the thickest and the sweetest, and the one for tzatziki, for a marinade that has to cling to lamb, or for eating with fruit. The 1kg tub is $15.75. The green-label Sheep Milk Yoghurt Probiotic 500g ($8.25, or 1kg for $14.60) is the same milk set with a different culture, which Meredith does not name, so neither do we.
The Goat Milk Yoghurt Probiotic 500g ($8.25; 1kg for $15.95) is thinner and sharper, with that clean goat tang. It is the one for a dressing, a raita, a lassi or a cold soup, and for anyone who finds the sheep yoghurt too rich. None of them are cheap against a supermarket cow's-milk tub; that is the trade-off of small-animal milk. The whole range is on our Meredith Dairy collection.
Questions people ask
Is Meredith marinated goat cheese feta?
No. It is feta-style, made with far more rennet and pressed rather than brined, and Meredith dropped the word from the label in 2018.
Can I freeze it?
Meredith gives no freezing instruction, and we would not. Freezing damages a fresh cheese's texture and can bring out the goaty note.
Is it vegetarian?
The marinated cheese uses non-animal rennet, so yes. None of it is vegan, and all of it contains milk.
Meredith's chèvres, marinated cheese and yoghurts are in the fridges at Leichhardt and Crows Nest, and we deliver them across Sydney with the rest of an online order.
