Food
Colin Wood Finds The Whey At Goldstreet dairy
The relentless quest for gold that has led Colin Wood to produce possibly the most in-demand cheese in Australia.
Colin Wood moves with silent, focused precision behind the serving counter down the side of Marrickville’s Wildflower Brewery, the picture of concentration. The man and the mind behind Goldstreet Dairy is in the midst of preparing a range of dishes for this feature’s photo shoot, and his absorption in the act suggests nothing so much as an elite athlete in a state of flow.
To those who know him, this should come as no surprise: from childhood to adolescence in his home town of Perth, the diminutive Wood was an accomplished junior gymnast, training at the West Australian Institute of Sport, eyes set on the Olympic rings. A serious back injury would put paid to that dream prematurely.
“The goal was to go to the Olympics,” Wood reflects later in conversation. “I think it’s only now that I realise that was a big turning point for me – like, I’d been working so hard towards something that all of a sudden wasn’t there, and then I was just kind of lost.”
The shattered dream would be the catalyst for Wood’s first reinvention, but it would not be his last. Wood was looking for something to fill the hole left by his exit from elite sports, and that something found him. “A friend’s brother was a chef and he said ‘Why don’t you come to work one day?’” remembers Wood.
The “work” in question was at a revolving restaurant 33 floors up in Perth’s St Martins Tower, today called C Restaurant. On emerging from the lift with another aspirant, a new world opened before him. “As the door opened, this waft of, like, hot air, smoke, garlic… these intense smells, people yelling, crashing about – this young kid just fell over and collapsed on the floor.”
The chef rushed to the fallen aspirant and bundled him back into the lift, packing him home by saying “I don’t think this is the place for you.” Wood “quietly shit my pants” but thought, “okay, this is for me.”
Despite the long hours and the general chaos of kitchen life, it became Wood’s new natural habitat. “The discipline, and the highly intense pressure at performing at that kind of level, that’s what I was drawn to.”
MEETING RICHARD THOMAS, THE CHEESE MASTER
After 10 years and a move to Melbourne, Wood made the leap to the higher bars of Australia’s restaurant scene, landing at Cumulus Inc. in 2007 under Andrew McConnell. Wood poured everything into his work there, eventually rising to head chef.
“It was such an intense role, with so much going on,” Wood recalls. “It was fast, and it was constantly growing.” A cheesemaking masterclass by a visiting Richard Thomas – the ‘godfather of Australian artisan cheese’ – sparked what would become an enduring passion for the relentlessly curious Wood.
“The way he talked about cheese was just so beautiful and poetic,” remembers Wood. “I initially learned this because I wanted to slow down, and cheesemaking is very much about that. It’s very intensely focused and sort of, you know, it’s a lot of waiting and things like that.”
I was making cheese with mum, who’d said she liked haloumi. I was like, “really? I hate it!” So I wanted to make something for her and for me that was a little bit different.
Under Thomas’ mentorship, Wood started making cheese at home in his one-bedroom apartment in Collingwood, on Gold Street. It was the beginning of a beautiful obsession that would change everything, providing a throughline even as Wood leapt from the kitchens of Melbourne to those of Ignacio Mattos in New York (estela) for three years and back, by way of lagering halls-turned-cheese-caves beneath the streets of Brooklyn, lockdowns in Perth and, sadly, the dissolution of his marriage.
AS GOOD AS GOLD
Wood has been open about his struggles with anxiety, the pressures of cheffing, the price of his perfectionism. It would be in cheese that he found solace, succour and purpose at each step of the way. His Instagram operated as a journal, charting his earliest Collingwood experiments and onwards.
“This was me, this was me expressing myself in my cheese, and what I was doing. It was like, this is who I am… if I wasn’t making cheese, I wasn’t feeling self-worth.”
Wood’s journey with this self-described obsession has been thoroughly articulated in There’s Always Room for Cheese, published in 2023, a comprehensive volume distilling all he’s learnt, and in which he describes cheesemaking as “a hobby, or, more accurately, a fledgling addiction” embraced as a way of dealing with the stress and demands of high-end kitchens.
Such stress seems a world away at Wildflower Brewing and Blending, where Goldstreet Dairy has its home. A few short years ago, Wood’s Instagramming of his original Jersey milk cheese generated an outpouring of positive responses during lockdown in Perth. “I was making cheese with mum, who’d said she liked haloumi. I was like, “really? I hate it!” So I wanted to make something for her and for me that was a little bit different.”
Read the full article in the latest edition of Selector, available now on stands and via Magzter and PressReader.