A cheese dynasty
It's all in the family for Borrello Cheese, which has been making traditional Italian- style ricotta and bocconcini for more than 30 years. The Oakford business started by Maree Borrello's Sicilian grandparents in 1962 has grown into one of WA's best-known brands, supplying IGA and Coles supermarkets, gourmet grocers and restaurants with a range of award-winning products made with locally sourced milk.
"We process about 12,000 litres a day, six days a week, into various cheeses," Ms Borrello said. "Dad is a cheese maker, so are my two younger sisters, Julia, 26, and Lisa, 25.
"My grandfather initially started making just a bit of ricotta and hard cheese for family and friends, but everyone told him it was so good that he should start a business. There was always a big demand because you couldn't buy it in Perth back then and it just grew from there. Mum and Dad stepped up things when they took over in the early 80s and added lots of new lines, including stracchino, marinated fetta and romano wheels with chilli and spices."
Production has increased in leaps and bounds over the past three decades, with Borrello expanding and equipping its factory - still on the original family farm - with brine, maturing and drying rooms, plus a fresh chiller for bocconcini and mozzarella.
"My grandfather did everything by hand, including milking his own cows, but we now source milk from four farms, all in the South West, and take deliveries seven days a week," Ms Borrello said. "Dad studied cheesemaking in Italy once he finished boarding at Guildford Grammar and goes to all the trade shows. My sisters and I never really questioned that this was going to be our path; we started helping from the moment we could stand on our feet."
Cheesemaking starts at 5am, when milk is pasteurised, and production ends about 1.30pm. Ms Borrello manages the on-site retail outlet with her mother, Teresa, and both look after the administration side of things in a winning formula that saw Borrello Cheese take out three golds at this year's IGA Perth Royal Show for its ricotta, baked ricotta and romano, plus four silvers for its bocconcini, provoleta, stracchino and fetta.
At the 2014 Dairy Industry Australia Association Dairy Product Competition, it won first prize for its ricotta, baked ricotta, bocconcini, fetta and marinated fetta.
"We make our fresh products, like ricotta, bocconcini, fetta, mozzarella and provoleta, daily," she said. "Some people love bocconcini so much that they eat it straight out of the tub.
"The romanos come with different spices - pepper, chilli, then there's chilli, chives and garlic, as well as cracked pepper and chilli - and they're very popular."
Ricotta is a staple, with a compressed variety popular in Indian cooking because it resembles paneer, but Ms Borrello's favourite is pecorino - shaved over salads, grated on pasta or simply sliced with crackers.
"We do a baked ricotta, but it's a beautiful cheese straight out of the tub on toast with honey on top for breakfast," she said. "We get people coming here and buying fresh, warm ricotta, which means they can go home and eat it straight away. Me, I love it in pancakes because it gives them a fluffy texture you just can't beat. It's a big retail and wholesale line, especially for pasta manufacturers."
The secret to Borrello's whisper-light ricotta is in the hand ladling, which makes it a very labour-intensive cheese, but it makes a big difference to the final product. "You just don't get the same texture once it's pumped into tubs," Ms Borrello said.
She said the cheeses were exclusive to WA and there were no plans to distribute them further afield, requests from Melbourne and inquiries from Singapore, China, India and, most recently, Japan, notwithstanding.
"It's not something we'd consider doing in the near future," Ms Borrello said. "We're working pretty much at maximum capacity and very happy doing what we do."
Olga de Moeller
