Klein River Cheese, which creates and promotes South Africa’s leading artisan cheese, were honoured with the Qualité mark of excellence for two of their cheeses at the SA Dairy Championships last month.

Klein River’s Gruberg Young and Gruberg Mature were among the 26 out of more than 900 entries honoured with the prestigious award.

The family-run business has been crafting cheese for more than 20 years and is situated on the Farmstead near Stanford, an art and foodie heritage village, surrounded by a lazy, meandering river, lush forests and grey-cliff, jagged mountains.

The family owners are dedicated to ensuring that they live and work in tune with the environment, community and Farmstead.

A little bit about our history

Klein River Cheese started out as a dairy farm back in the day, bottling their own milk. They slowly nurtured and built up their herd of Friesland cows and were supplying the surrounding areas with fresh milk and cream. Over the years the milk prices fluctuated forcing management to investigate an alternative use for the milk. They studied the market and decided that there was a gap for proudly South African produced hard cheese. In 1995 they used their surplus milk and started experimenting with cheese for the first time.

A Swiss/German cheese maker helped to set up the factory. He later taught a local cheesemaker to make the unique South African hard cheese, their flagship cheese known as Klein River Gruberg. In the following years the cheese won numerous awards and the cheese factory grew. Their cheesemakers continue this tradition to this day. 

Purpose

The team at Klein River Cheese says: “We exist to unleash the inner artisan in every one of us. Our cheese collection inspires chefs and romantics, nature lovers and healthy families. Klein River Cheese is not only about our products, it’s our culture. 

“Our handmade, hand brushed, hand cut cheese is a vehicle to join the artisan way of life. Are you ready to join the proudly South African artisan cheese movement?”