Venezuelan cheese in the heart of Tasmania - a family's paddock-to-plate

Rosselyn and Genaaro Escalante, Smithon, Tas, noticed a gap in the community and market for a paddock-to-plate local cheese factory, and paired with their passion for animals - decided to make it happen.

Mr and Mrs Escalante hailed from Venezuela as qualified veterinarians, moving to Brisbane, QLD, in 2009 to avoid political and economic tensions back home and further their studies.

"With the situation back home we couldn't access the funds to continue to university," Mr Escalante said.

"So we applied for asylum and for protection out of fear of going back to Venezuela."

He said they eventually found employment on a beef operation at Queensland, before starting dairy farming in New South Wales in 2012 and becoming citizens in 2014.

"We saw there were a lot of opportunities in the dairy industry and we enjoyed what we were doing," he said.

Mr Escalante said their prior veterinary experience and animal health knowledge helped them progress in the industry, paired with their fast-learning on pasture and people management.

He said they noticed an opening for a farming couple in Tasmania on a 950-head dairy farm and took the role, before entering into sharefarming.

"We came from a dry land, heavily-irrigated, high-input farm to a high-rainfall farm, with far less irrigation," he said.

"In 2020 we decided we wanted to do something independently, something for ourselves, and that's when we came up with the idea of cheesemaking."

Mr and Mrs Escalante decided to study two cheesemaking courses, travelling to New Zealand and creating their own mock-up of a factory in a former-backpacker's shed to practise sanitisation methods.

He said on their return from New Zealand, they discovered there were no dairy manufacturing facilities for local production and consumption, but there was a project in the works.

"It was a robotic dairy with tourist purposes, all funded through a federal grant, when we approached them the facility was all one paddock with one water trough and no facilities, no subdivisions, nothing," Mr Escalante said.

"At that stage we made sure what we were planning to do and they proposed to us to add a cheese factory to the project.

"It sounded too good to be true, but we started negotiations and went ahead with the deal and they offered for us to lease the farm as well."

Mr and Mrs Escalante then launched La Cantara Cheeses and Duck River Meadows Dairy.

He said it was a much bigger challenge and risk than initially planned, but they enjoyed having full control over their herd, feed, and milk quality.

They put Wagyu over Jersey to improve calving ease, production and lactation length, and milk quality to fit their breeding goals.

They started with 100 milking cows but are currently milking 85-head, with plans to build back up to about 100 after autumn calving next year.

Mr Escalante said they produced nine different types of cheese with common flavours and a clean, milky, buttery flavour from the crossbred herd.

"We have to be careful with our feed because whatever flavour we put through the cows' mouth may not be great for the cheese," Mr Escalante said.

"We put new things into practice and then it brings the cheese to a new level, it's a continuous improvement."

Mrs Escalante said their next focus would be to start bottling milk and opening up a milk-on-tap service for community members to bring glass bottles to reuse for milk storage.

She said they would also be getting ready for the Good Food & Wine festival across Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth next year, and other upcoming food festivals.

"We're thinking of bottling milk, in the process of bottling milk and having the milk on tap where people can bring their glass bottles from home and fill them up," she said.

"By January they should be able to use the milk tap.

"We were afraid of taking the risk [with opening the factory] but it's worked out really well, we're very very happy."