While leading marketing for her family’s vineyard in South Australia, Kris Lloyd wanted the food served at the winery restaurant to feel as thoughtful as the wine itself. Inspired by “what grows together, goes together,” she began searching for local cheeses worthy of the pairing. When a nearby creamery, Woodside Cheese Wrights came up for sale, she saw an opportunity—despite having no formal cheesemaking experience. Trusting her instincts and business background, she stepped into an entirely new craft.
Determined to learn from the best, Kris traveled through Europe, studying alongside respected cheesemakers and immersing herself in traditional techniques. She returned home with a more intuitive understanding of the craft and began shaping those methods around the landscape, climate, and milk of Australia’s Adelaide Hills.
Today, as CEO and head cheesemaker, Kris has transformed Woodside Cheese Wrights into one of Australia’s most celebrated artisan creameries. Working with cow, goat, and buffalo milk sourced from nearby farms, she and her team handcraft cheeses that balance technical precision with creativity, seasonality, and a strong sense of place.
Bristol Farms is pleased to offer a curated selection of Kris’ artisan cheeses:
Persian-style Buffalo Feta
Rich and velvety, available in two flavor profiles and marinated in extra virgin olive oil.
Persian Golden Blossom
A bright, lemony chèvre delicately dusted with gold leaf and edible wildflowers, paired with a vial of native Australian honey.
Persian Monet
A citrusy goat cheese adorned with native herbs and botanicals for a presentation that’s almost too beautiful to slice.
Recently, we caught up with Kris to learn more about her journey and hear her advice for fellow entrepreneurs.
1. Why did you start Woodside Cheese Wrights?
I started Woodside Cheese Wrights over 25 years ago with a simple but powerful idea: to create beautiful, handcrafted cheeses that truly express the quality of the milk, the land, and the hands that make them. I am self-taught, driven by curiosity, with a desire to push boundaries. Over time, it became about far more than cheese. My focus became storytelling, creativity, and bringing something unexpected and joyful to the table. I don’t simply make cheese; it’s much more than that. For me, it’s about creating beautiful food that brings people together around the table, and that has always been at the heart of what I do. A local chef, Simon Bryant, once said something about my work that has stayed with me ever since: “She doesn’t just make cheese. She creates cultural dialogue around it.” I feel incredibly lucky to still be so passionate about what I do, more than two decades in. It has been an immensely satisfying career, one that continues to inspire and challenge me every day, and I honestly can’t imagine an end to that passion.
2. What obstacles did you face along the way?
Like many small producers, the early days were tough—limited resources, no internet, and only a handful of books that, to be honest, weren’t particularly helpful anyway! There were long hours and a constant need to prove that what we were doing had value. Being a woman in a traditionally male-dominated industry also came with its challenges. As a completely self-taught cheesemaker, making mistakes simply became part of how I learned. It was hard, costly, and often very inefficient, but it also built an incredibly powerful determination within me. I found myself constantly thinking, “Don’t tell me something can’t be done—of course it can!” And with that mindset driving me forward, I was prepared to navigate my way through every obstacle until I succeeded. More recently, scaling while maintaining quality, navigating international markets, and meeting increasingly complex compliance standards has been demanding, but those challenges have also strengthened the business and sharpened our focus.
3. What lessons do you have for other entrepreneurs?
Stay true to your vision, but be willing to evolve. Consistency and resilience matter just as much as creativity. Surround yourself with people who are better than you in their field, and never stop learning. Most importantly, don’t compromise on quality—your product must speak for itself, every single time. I also think it’s incredibly important to have a clear vision that you genuinely share with your team. Alone, I can achieve things, but together with a passionate team, we can achieve so much more. Confidence is also incredibly powerful. Believing in yourself, your work, and your vision allows others to believe in it too. I’ve often found that once I truly believed in an idea, I could bring people on the journey with me—even those who may have initially been skeptical. I also believe strongly in third-party endorsement as a valuable tool. Awards, recognition, and external validation can help set you apart, reinforce the value of your work, and sometimes even help you recalibrate and grow. Over the years I’ve developed what I call my three P’s for cheesemaking and life: passion, persistence, and patience.
4. What’s on the horizon for Woodside Cheese Wrights?
We’re incredibly excited to be expanding into the U.S. market and partnering with Bristol Farms and, more recently, into specialty markets in Singapore. There’s a growing appetite for artisan, story-driven products, and we have so much to share. We’re continuing to innovate across our range, particularly with our buffalo milk cheeses and the evolving Monet Collection, while staying grounded in small-batch production and provenance. Our inclusion of Australian native ingredients has become a meaningful way for us to tell a truly Australian cheesemaking story and share a part of our world with the rest of the world. That is incredibly important to me and very much represents where we are heading with our completely handmade range of cheeses, crafted using single-herd milk from animals cared for on smaller farms. This allows exceptional control over animal welfare, milk quality, and ultimately the quality of the cheese itself. Caring for these important aspects of our business has never been more important and will continue to drive our future sustainability. I am also very excited to have expanded into additional products under my Kris Lloyd Artisan brand, including relishes, crackers, butter, finishing salts, and my own design of cheese knives. I’ve been fortunate to collaborate with talented local artisans who have helped bring these products, many of which I have dreamed of creating for years, to life. For me, they complete the experience at the table and allow for a further extension of the Kris Lloyd Artisan story. In essence, growth for us is about thoughtful expansion and never compromising.
5. How do you keep work/life balance? What drives/inspires you?
Balance is always a work in progress! I must admit when you love what you do, the lines can blur. What grounds me is connection to my family, my team, the passionate people I have the great pleasure of working with, including the team from Bristol Farms, and the land we work on. My eldest son Mitch is involved in the business, which I love; he brings a great energy and constant source of support that is never underestimated. I’m constantly inspired by ingredients, seasons, and the creative process itself. Seeing people enjoy our cheeses, whether it’s at their kitchen table or at a large event across the globe, this is what inspires me the most. It’s also incredibly rewarding when you have an original idea, something that exists only in your imagination, and you have the courage to bring it to life and then to see it resonate with people and to watch them embrace and love it. That feeling is very special. At the end of the day, I believe cuisine is when things taste like themselves, and that philosophy continues to guide everything I do.
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