The first time Arpan Kalotra and Bhimsinh Ghanghal tasted feta, they spat it out. Surely this crumbly, smelly thing couldn’t have come from something as wholesome as milk? It was 2021, and the goat and sheep herders from Gujarat’s Maldhari community had learnt how to make cheese from Namrata Sundaresan, a Chennai-based cheesemaker, as part of a nationwide programme aimed to boost pastoral people’s livelihoods. But that first bite? They were pretty sceptical.
They slowly came around. Kalotra and Ghanghal set up Panchal Dairy in 2022, procuring milk from local herds and turning it into familiar chevre and feta alongside more exotic sheep ricotta and Manchego. Sundaresan says they not only proudly present their artisanal creations at food events now, but “at home, they enjoy bajra rotis smeared with soft goat cheese and garlic chutney”.
Up until recently, India’s cheese story was so straightforward, you could grate it on a slice of white bread. Sure, we made paneer. But processed cheese was either salty yellow blocks of Amul; small players making burrata and parmesan for supermarkets and restaurants; or mass-market brands churning out mozzarella for pizza and mascarpone for desserts. It’s only in the last few years that we’ve started to get serious, with pastoral cheese (made from milk procured from nomadic herders) and farmstead cheese (produced at the farm where the animal is milked).
We now have sheep, goat and camel milk cheese in Gujarat and Rajasthan, yak milk cheese in Arunachal Pradesh, buffalo and cow milk cheese from Tamil Nadu. It’s all a little new, a little tricky – mostly sold by individual dairies online or within the region. But it’s giving us the first taste of how India’s varied landscape and livestock can influence the flavours of something we thought we knew.
Show me the whey
Around the world, cheesemaking follows roughly the same principle: An enzyme called rennet is added to milk, to separate it into solid curds and liquid whey. Those curds are pressed and aged in different ways, yielding soft, fresh cheeses and hard, aged ones. While cheesemakers abroad use animal-origin rennet (typically from the stomach), Indian cheese is made with cultured fungi, making it vegetarian by default.
But as India’s new cheesemakers are learning, there’s no such thing as simple substitution in this game. What works with milk from one animal doesn’t work with another. Camel milk, in particular, doesn’t coagulate with regular rennet. So, Aakriti Srivastava, who lives and works among Rajasthan’s pastoralists, uses one that was specially developed in Kenya (the largest producer of camel milk), to create halloumi, feta and Cheshire (a salty, crumbly cheese, aged for three-to-six months). Srivastava founded Bahula Naturals in 2022 to sell the cheese. There’s drama at every step: “We are based in Gomat, a village approximately 130 kilometres from the milk collection centre in Bajju, in Bikaner,” she says. Summer days can get as hot as 48°C. “Herds move farther in search of food and water. So, our staff travels on motorcycles, carrying large stainless-steel cylinders fitted with frozen-gel inserts to collect milk from the herders, and keep it fresh.” Even in Gomat, there are frequent power cuts. So Bahula’s dairy runs largely on solar power to keep the milk cool all through the cheesemaking process.
One win for camel milk: It is easier to digest if you are lactose intolerant. So, in Sadri, Rajasthan, Camel Charisma, a social enterprise, collects milk from camel herders and turns it into gut friendly feta and cream cheese. It’s cruelty-free too. “The herders milk the animals only after the calves have fed,” says Dr Ilse Köhler-Rollefson, co-founder. She hopes that cheese might be a way for the herders to have a stable income. Local resorts have already put the items on their breakfast buffets.
The problem with chill
With sheep, goat, cow, buffalo and yak milk, rennet isn’t the challenge, logistics is. In Arunachal Pradesh, locals have made yak milk cheese for generations. Free-grazing yaks move to lower altitudes in the winter, in search of food. There, Ama Sangey’s family, along with other locals puts out bowls of a slurry made with wheat, mustard oil and salt for them. The yak milk yields “not just the hard churrpi, but a creamy variety that is wrapped in animal skin and stored for a year. It forms the base of their curry,” says Sundaresan, co-founder of the artisanal cheese brand Käse.
Sundaresan spent a few months of 2025 in Tawang, as part of an initiative by the Centre for Pastoralism, exchanging cheesemaking techniques with Sangey, who runs Mon Yak Dairy. Commercial rennet has been a game-changer in the mountains, she says. In 2026, Sangey moved from selling feta, cheddar and halloumi at local restaurants to stocking at boutique resorts and local festivals like Losar.
In Chennai, Arul Futnani has been making cow and buffalo milk cheese on his farm for over a decade. “We started with farmstead mozzarella to use on pizzas at the restaurant attached to our farm,” he says. They now also make 17 cheeses, including Tomme de Semmancheri (a semi-soft, Alpine-style cheese named after the local village), a semi-hard Madras pepper Jack, a brie-style Bloomy Rind cheese and a labneh cheese rolled in herbs and spices.
Business has grown, but his delivery radius hasn’t. “There is no reliability with shipping times for small orders and we cannot assure that couriers will store the cheese at the right temperature.” So the cheese made on the farm is also sold only on the farm.
Spreading the idea
Most pastoral and farmstead operations don’t produce enough cheese to invest in refrigerated trucks, chilled storage units and other expensive ways to keep their items fresh on long shipping journeys. So, it’s easier to supply to local hotels (tweaking the taste for their needs) than to a family in a big city, far away who may or may not repurchase. At Bahula Naturals, Srivastava hopes to open an experiential centre in Bikaner in October.
At Panchal Dairy, all aged cheese is made after pre-orders on the website. At Camel Charisma, the cheese is dispatched to restaurants in Sadri, and to nearby cities packed in dry ice. “We are all in the same boat, businesswise,” says Futnani. “So, while we don’t share trade secrets, we share logistical challenges and our best practices to overcome them.” Shipping cheese made in rural areas was a key topic of discussion at the Desi Dairy Dialogue held for the cheese industry in Chennai in 2024.
For those in big cities, being able to order Indian pastoral or farmstead cheese is a flex in itself. In Mumbai, Asma Sayed, who runs Bombay Fromagerie, makes it a little easier, by stocking varieties from Panchal Dairy, and kaladi, a hard cheese from Surya Dairy in Jammu. “We have information cards with details on the source of the cheese, how to pronounce the names, and pairings with wine and coffee,” Sayed says. She has also created 40 short videos to train staff at gourmet supermarkets on recommending local cheese.
But perhaps the biggest endorsement has come from the herders themselves. Srivastava recalls how the nomads in Bikaner were initially unimpressed about cheese made from their camels. Their first reaction was, “we don’t know what this is and we won’t eat it,” she recalls. It took weeks of persuasion before they tried some camel milk halloumi with rotis and chutney. “Now, they’re adventurous enough to try feta spreads that have caramelised onion and cracked pepper.” Big city folks, when they finally get their hands on it, will likely be easier converts.
From HT Brunch, May 30, 2026
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