About Us
“You can’t make everyone happy. You’re not cheese.”
-Anonymous-
Here at the Yarra Valley Dairy, we are most certainly in the business of making people happy.
On our farm here in Yering, set in the sweeping country landscape of the Yarra Valley Ranges, and watched over by it’s quietly beautiful mountains, we make our award-winning cheeses.
Wind back the years to 1994, we found ourselves with a healthy surplus of cow’s milk – a nice problem to have. Our first cheese was made – a soft ricotta-style cheese, paving the way for the creation of our now iconic, Persian Fetta. This soft cow’s milk cheese marinated in fresh herbs, garlic and olive oil, established an entirely new style of cheese here in Australia.
Today, we are still using this original Persian Fetta recipe, along with traditional recipes for our range of European style soft cheeses, all adapted for our beautiful local Australian milk and hand crafted right here on the farm.
And, we are still making people happy, every day.
Cheese making Process
All of our cheeses are hand made in our production facility on the farm in the beautiful, lush Yarra Valley, using premium quality fresh cow and goat’s milk and 99% Australian ingredients.
From the locally grown garlic and fresh herbs to the Olive and Canola (Non GMO) oils used in our marinated fettas, all of our ingredients are Australian grown with the only exception being the cultures used in the cheesemaking process. There is no sugar or gluten in any of our products, except of course, for the natural sweetness present in honey.
Our production staff hand make and pack all of our products; from receiving and pasteurising the milk fresh every day, turning it into our beautiful cheese, extruding the cheese, chopping the fresh herbs and local garlic, hand pouring the oil into the tubs, right through to the final seal on each box as they ready them for delivery.
The Cheese Factory
Our Cheeses are made using the freshest cow’s milk provided by our neighbouring dairy farms and our goats milk is delivered regularly from the Mansfield region only a couple of hours away, where the natural environment and pastures are more suited to farming goats.
Most of our cheeses are fresh and soft in character, with a firm nod in style to the simple, fresh farmhouse cheeses produced in Italy and France. Our focus is on producing as much as possible by hand, with all our cheeses made, wrapped and packed by our dedicated cheesemakers and production staff.
The Cheese Shop
The Cheese Shop is open 10:30am – 5pm daily and only closed on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Located in the beautifully refurbished, original milking shed, we offer platters of our much-loved cheeses alongside various, carefully selected regional produce and great local wines.
Thousands of visitors arrive each year to take in the stunning views of the Yarra Valley and taste our superb artisan cheeses, taking home years of experience and knowledge in each of our handcrafted Yarra Valley Dairy cheeses.
