The push it took to start Cultured Cheese School

The thing about living in Sweden (2011–2014) is that you learn to love a lot of things: clean lines, crisp air that wakes you up like a slap, and the kind of winter light that makes everything feel a little bit cinematic, oh and how to be a little less Bambi on ice like!

Cheese, though? Sweden isn’t exactly out here seducing you with it.

So when November 2013 rolled around, I did what any sensible person with a quietly aching dairy-shaped hole in their heart would do: I ducked down to Nice, France for the weekend. Just a quick escape, I told myself. A little sun. A little wandering. A couple snails, A little “change of scene.”

The second I hit those cobblestone streets, it was like my body remembered something my brain had been trying to ignore.

The markets in Nice don’t sell food so much as perform it. The air is loud with voices and clinking crates, and everything smells alive tomatoes, mushrooms, warm bread. You walk past pyramids of tomatoes that actually look like tomatoes (not pale little winter ghosts), glossy peppers, olives shining like they’ve been polished. And then—there it is.

Cheese.

Not the polite, practical kind. The kind that sits there like it knows exactly what it’s doing. Wheels and wedges and soft, slumping rounds wrapped in paper like secrets. Rinds that look rugged and confident. That unmistakable, slightly wild perfume that says: this is going to be worth it.

I remember slowing down without meaning to. Like my feet just decided for me.

I started “just looking,” which lasted about twelve seconds. Then I was pointing, asking questions in my best half-confident, half-hopeful way, and nodding like I was a local who totally had a plan. The cheesemonger wrapped things up with that effortless French competence—paper folded tight, a little label scribbled, the parcel handed over like a gift.

And I kept going.

A bit of this. A bit of that. Oh, and that one too. And somehow I ended up with bags that were far too heavy for a weekend trip and a grin that was completely unstoppable.

Back at the hotel, I did what any reasonable adult would do: I turned the bed into a picnic table.

Paper spread out. Bread torn open. Cheese unwrapped like treasure. Fresh produce rolling around like it had escaped a still life painting. A bottle of wine because honestly, it would’ve been rude not to.

And then I ate.

Not delicately. Not thoughtfully. Just… gratefully. Like I was trying to make up for lost time. Like every bite was proof that I wasn’t imagining it—food could be this. It could be full of personality, and mess, and joy. It could taste like a place.

I ate as much as I could, and when I couldn’t eat anymore, I just sat there, surrounded by the evidence, feeling ridiculously happy and a little bit furious.

Because once you’ve had that—once you’ve walked those markets and carried your ridiculous haul back through the streets and eaten cheese on a hotel bed like it’s the most normal thing in the world—it’s hard to go back to a life where food feels like an afterthought.

I didn’t last much longer in Sweden after that.

By early 2014, I was back in the Barossa Valley, and something had shifted. Nice wasn’t just a weekend away anymore—it was a reminder. A spark. A very clear message from somewhere deep in my bones:

This is what you love. This is what you’re meant to share.

And that’s where Cultured Cheese School began—not in a business plan, not in a neat little “aha” moment… but in a flashback of cobblestones, market noise, paper-wrapped parcels, and a hotel bed covered in cheese and possibility.