Chandeshwori —
When Frenchman Francois Driard decided to settle in Nepal after a decade-long love affair with the Himalayan nation, just one thing was missing: good cheese. So the 31-year-old former business writer decided to make his own.
For the past year and a half, Driard has been running a small dairy farm in the foothills of the Himalayas, producing mountain cheeses using traditional methods honed over centuries in the French Alps.
“It started out as a bit of a romantic idea — I like nature and I like food, and I had a vague idea that I might do some farming,” says Driard.
“In Nepal now you can find almost everything, but non-processed cheese was missing.
“I thought it would be a good place to make quality cheese because labour is still cheap and nature is generous. We’ve got good rain, good milk; it’s a good country for cheese.”
Driard says he was also inspired by the desire to ensure traditional techniques are preserved as European consumers increasingly opt for cheaper, factory-made cheeses.
But his former career compiling reports on investment opportunities in developing countries for the likes of Business Week and the Miami Herald provided scant preparation for life as a cheese-maker.
So, having rented a plot of land northwest of Kathmandu, Driard travelled to the French Alps in the summer of 2007 to learn how to make Tomme de Savoie, a semi-hard cow’s milk cheese made by farmers there for centuries.
By the end of that year he had produced his first batch of Himalayan French Cheese, which is made using the traditional French method but does not qualify for the name because it is not made in the Savoie region.