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James and Jim O’Doherty (Snr) pictured with a selection of their Old Irish Creamery cheeses, which have won a huge number of awards.

Over the past number of years, people's tastes have been evolving and James O'Doherty and his parents, Jim Senior and Lulu from Kilmallock, have tapped into market this with their extensive range of cheeses. With flavour combinations that you couldn't even imagine, they have watched as their business and creamery in Effin have gone from strength to strength.

James, who lives in Kilfinane, worked as a fitter before he went into business with his father - his father was a cheesemaker in Golden Vale for more than 30 years and it had always been his dream to one day make his own cheese. While Jim Snr looks after the cheese production, James does the sales and another former Golden Vale employee, Pat Kinnane looks after quality control and the buying in of ingredients and material - between the three of them, they have more than 100 years of experience in the cheese industry, employing nine full time staff members.

Rather than just making plain cheddar, they wanted to do something different and they could see that people were eating differently to what they did twenty years ago and they wanted their cheese to reflect this change in tastes.

When word got out that Golden Vale were looking to outsource some contract work, the O'Doherty family set about looking into setting up their own cheese company and they bought the old creamery in Effin in 1992, where cheese has been made since 1902.

Through the contract work, they built up good relationships with the co-op's and this led to sourcing and trading cheese.

"My father always wanted to make his own cheese and when we took over the creamery, that was always our aim at the end of the day," James explained.

In a way, building up their own brand was a realisation of his father's life's work. However, they needed to build up a rapport with companies and have the finance to build their own cheese brand, so it was not until 2008 that they started bringing their products to farmers markets.

Since 2008, their cheese range has won more than 70 international awards and just last week, they won two silver and one bronze award at the World Cheese Awards. 

James explained that they were doing four or five farmers' markets a week at that point and it was a great way to test new products with customers and also to get the brand out there, thus making people familiar both with the O'Doherty's and their cheese range.

O'Sullivan butchers in Kilmallock were the first shop to stock their cheese in November 2009 and from there it all snowballed. They now have a range of 21 cheeses, with more being developed each year and their cheeses are on shelves in Aldi, Tesco, most SuperValu stores around the country and in individual shops.

The Barry group also took products from them last month and they will also have products in Lidl in the new year.

GROWING MARKETS

As for their very impressive export market, they now export to America, Luxembourg, Dubai, the UK, France, Austria, Canada and Malta.

"It's amazing to think that blocks of cheese made in a small creamery in Effin are now on shelves in some of the biggest shops in the world.

"At the moment, 65% of our business is in the home market and 35% is in exports, but in five or six years, I would hope that we will have 95% in exports and 5% at home and that 5% will be having our cheese in almost every shop in the country.

"We definitely have the biggest range of cheeses in Ireland and we are still only at 10% capacity of what we can do," James told The Avondhu.

UNUSUAL FLOVOURINGS

Speaking about some of the more unusual products they have developed, James said that they have cheeses flavoured with curry, chilli, chocolate (a great way to get children interested in cheese), coffee, garlic and much more. They are all 100% natural and 100% Irish, made with Irish ingredients wherever possible.

The smoked cheese would be most popular and during his days in Golden Vale, Jim Snr would have been the first person in Ireland to commercially smoke cheese, so it was something he had down to a fine art.

Many of the flavours have come from what the customers want and it could take between nine months and a year for a product to come to the shelves, but they bring out two or three new flavours every year.

Building on the fact that Irish gimmicky products thrive on the American market, they have developed a visually striking green, white and gold cheese especially for Paddy's Day, with three cheeses put together into one. The green cheese is flavoured with green beer, the white layer is whiskey flavoured and the red is coloured cheddar. This adds to their previous novelty cheeses, such as the Guinness and Murphy flavoured ones. The range is available in most shops around Ireland and the largest range of cheeses would be found in local SuperValu stores.

ARTISAN FOOD PRODUCER

Being part of the A Taste of Ballyhoura Country brand has given them more exposure and it also means that they are part of a community of artisan food producers.

It also led to the Old Irish Creamery brand being featured on Nationwide last year and at this year's ploughing championships. A hamper made up of products from A Taste of Ballyhoura Country was presented to President Michael D Higgins and his wife Sabina - so the products from the Ballyhoura region were being eaten in Aras an Uachtarain. 

"It is something we are very proud to be part of," James said.

The creamery also do wonderful gift bags for Christmas and there are some delicious recipe ideas from the A Taste of Ballyhoura Country recipe booklet, which was distributed with last week's edition of The Avondhu.

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