In three short years novice Whangārei cheesemaker Zev Kaka-Holtz has gone from washing the dishes to being recognised internationally for his cheese.
The 30-year-old started working at Grinning Gecko Cheese Company in 2015 after a Work and Income referral.
"I was picking avocados, doing seasonal jobs before."
The advertisement was for a cheesemaking assistant. He needed a job, so he took it.
"Then I realised there's a lot more to it, it's really interesting."
Kaka-Holtz said he spent about six months washing dishes before his boss Catherine McNamara started getting him more and more involved in the cheesemaking process.
He developed his own cheese, the kau piro, which means smelly cow in Te Reo.
"It starts of as a camembert and then it gets washed in a bacteria solution."
He worked on it for about six months before entering it in the NZ Cheese Awards in 2016, where it won a gold medal.
"It's taken me a couple of years to get fully right."
The kau piro was entered into the best cheese made by a novice cheesemaker with less than five years' cheesemaking experience category at the International Cheese and Dairy awards in Nantwich, England last month.
He picked up bronze.
"At first, the competitor in me was a bit gutted I didn't get the gold."
Then McNamara told him the two British companies that won gold and silver had been around since the 1880s and 1930s, bringing years of mentoring and experience to the table.
He said his international recognition was quite a big achievement.
"It's really humbling."
But he said his three young children, aged 8, 4, and 2, "keep dad's feet on the ground".
His kau piro takes about a month to complete. It takes seven days to make the camembert. Then he starts washing it - every second day for two weeks.
Then it needs time to mature.
"There's a lot of mahi, a lot of love that goes into it."
The cheese had to be packaged up in a poly bin with ice to get to Australia before it was flown under refrigeration to the other side of the world for judging.
He said they picked the cheese younger, and had to imagine what it would look like in a few weeks.
Not surprisingly, the kau piro is his favourite cheese.
He was immensely grateful to McNamara for "taking a punt on someone who had no experience".
Grinning Gecko cheese owner McNamara said Kaka-Holtz had a natural curiosity and a thirst for knowledge.
"It became very obvious he would take on the cheesemaking process very easily."
She was "absolutely stoked" after Kaka-Holtz claimed bronze.
"I can't even put into words how proud we are of him."
Kaka-Holtz also picked up the aspiring cheesemaker award at last year's NZ Cheese Awards.
He hoped his story would inspire others to keep pushing.
A list of places you can buy Grinning Gecko's cheese can be found at grinninggecko.co.nz/find-cheese/
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