Belnori Boutique Cheesery has put Bapsfontein on the culinary map after cleaning up at the 2018 annual World Cheese Awards in Bergen, Norway.
Belnori’s Kilembe, a hard, Caprino-style goat cheese, was not only crowned Best South African Cheese, but also one of the top 16 cheese in the world at this contest, which is billed as the “planet’s biggest ‘cheese only competition”.
That was no small feat considering a record-breaking 3,472 cheeses from 41 countries were competing for top honours that year.
A panel of judges was given the enviable task of tasting all that cheese to dish out bronze, silver, gold and super gold awards to worthy entries.
A mere 78 cheeses were awarded super gold status.
Belnori Boutique Cheesery once again shone as the only local cheesemaker to scoop super gold awards for their Kilembe and Kalabash, a romano-style cheese.
Kalabash and Kilembe were the only two local kinds of cheese to win super gold awards at the 2018 World Cheese Awards.
They received super gold in 2019 at the World Cheese Awards – only four SA cheeses have ever fallen in that category – and even snatched the trophy for South Africa’s best cheese from Parmalat.
Not a stranger to awards, their goat’s yoghurt also took first and third place at the championships and they were awarded Farmer of the Year for Gauteng by the agricultural board.
They also got a citation for what they add to the cheese industry from Slow Food Cape Town and a hero’s award from the Johannesburg Affiliate, of which they are a proud member.
Ms Rina and Mr Norman Belcher began making cheese in what the Belchers call “a very primitive fashion” over the weekends with a 15-litre pot and a homemade double boiler in an industrial dustbin.
They would go on to have three of these dustbin double boiler set ups with four pots each before switching to industrial double boilers and eventually hacking a small (in terms of the cow milk trade), 500l per hour pasteuriser.
“We are little people, we wanted a little machine to do little things. And that changed our lives.”
It’s thanks to this little machine that they can heat many small batches of milk at different temperatures throughout the day and freely make as much cheese as they like or at least whatever time and milk will provide as goats only produce milk for two and half months a year.
They began selling products on a small scale in 2003 and only had three products that were exhibited at two local farmers markets.
Now they have won 28 World Awards and 77 national gold medals.
“I couldn’t make just one cheese, I think I wouldn’t have been able to excel. We made a decision right in the beginning that I wanted to be a boutique cheesery and make lots of things in little bits. I don’t want to be the world’s cheddar maker or feta maker. No, I want little bits,” said Ms Belcher.
Belnori Boutique Cheesery started everything the wrong way round.
The first goat they had was an unmilkable billy goat, a gift from a friend.
Only afterwards did they decide that perhaps they should get some females and the rest is history.
Eighteen years ago Ms Belcher said while in the kitchen chopping beans: “You want animals and I always fancied making cheese,” as Mr Belcher informed her about an article he read in the Farmers Weekly.
About 10 days later someone in Springs offered a course on goat animal husbandry and how to make goat feta and Mr Belcher went.
They came to South Africa in 1999 and they have been here ever since.
Now they have a small farm in Bapsfontein lined with the phantom’s wattle forest along with 13 workers, an old stately American bell tower, a few dogs, 100 goats and 35 East Friesian sheep.
The first little bits of cheese they made was an old fashion goat gouda now call Tanglewood.
The cheese is made with a washed curd that gets scalded when some of the whey is replaced with hot water. It’s this scalding that made it the fairly strong cheese and apparently, not everyone up north loved its flavour.
A lot of their cheeses have imaginative names.
There are the mouldy activated charcoal ashed logs called Forest Phantom named after the heavy mist that rolls through the wattle forest on a cold day.
And then there is the East African range; Serengeti, Amboseli, Colembe, Kampala and Kilimanjaro, covered in decoupage images of Maasai, sunsets and elephants from serviettes.
These names are inspired by the Belchers’ childhood.
“Everything is done by hand; we roll by hand and pack by hand. Even the presses are not mechanised.
They are vintage and so are we.”
But this hands-on approach allows them to see the difference when they make their roughly 22 different goat’s milk products, two sheep’s milk and eight cow’s milk products.
“Sometimes it’s this difference that can lead to a whole new line, which brings us back to the joys of mistakes in cheese making.”
They once made chevre and completely stuffed it up. Mr Belcher said they had to throw it away, but Ms Belcher wanted to see what happened.
“It was a nice cheese. I even entered a competition and it won its class. It’s become one of the lines and now I must just think of a name. So it is those little things that make me think gosh when you think of the whole cheese spectrum probably 90% of what’s out there is somebody’s mistake that they put a label on.”
