Klein River Cheese is situated in the beautiful Klein river valley, just 7km outside Stanford.  (30 km inland from Hermanus & about 90 minutes drive from Cape Town)

It all started in 1995 when Riaan and Shelley Lourens decided to utilize their surplus milk by making cheese on a small scale.  After studying the market and realizing the growing demand in South Africa for cheese of high quality and the absence of any locally produced Swiss hard cheese, they decided to produce a Gruyere-type cheese.

From a small beginning with a Swiss/German cheese maker, who helped set up the business and later trained local Blue cheese maker Jaco van Beulen, the business has grown steadily.

 

We now make 2 batches of cheese a day, one batch uses 3000 l of milk.  From each batch we get 20 rounds of Gruyere-type cheese, weighing between 12 and 15 kg.  The cheeses are stored just below room temperature in cold rooms, where they are turned and some washed everyday.  
Our Gruyere-type cheese is sold at 3 stages: 

• Young Gruyere-type cheese (3 months)
• Gruyere-type cheese (6months)
• Extra Mature Gruyere-type cheese (10 months)

Other cheeses we are making include Colby, Leiden, Danbo, Havarti, Raclette, Van Beulen & Stanford. More recently we have made Grana and an Oak Smoked version of our popular Stanford.  We also make a creamy feta cheese and flavoured cream cheese, though these are only available in our farm shop.

We have been lucky to be awarded numerous prizes over the last few years.  Some recent awards are, in 2003 a bronze medal at the World Cheese Awards in London for our Gruyere-type cheese & in 2004 a gold medal for our Extra Mature Gruyere-type cheese. In 2004 a 1st prize for best hard cheese;  Dairy Product of the year;  Qualite award for outstanding product quality and a Slow Food award for creativity and pioneering efforts to extend the range of world class South African cheeses, all for Klein River Extra Mature Gruyere-type cheese.  In 2005 the Extra Mature Gruyere-type cheese and ordinary Gruyere-type cheeses both won 1st prizes and the Danbo a 3rd prize.