Catherine and James were Whangarei locals living on a lifestyle block at the beautiful Whangarei Heads.
Catherine worked in HR and James in engineering, but being nature-lovers and cheese obsessives, they decided to follow their passion and dove into cheesemaking. It started with Catherine doing a cheese course (we are pleased she rejected artisan chocolate!) and beginning to experiment, but quickly turned into a small business with big intentions.
They marked their twin interests by naming their cheese company after the green geckos on the kanuka and manuka on their property. They are charming and beautiful creatures and it’s a charming name for their beautiful cheeses.
Theirs was a classic artisan story. They only used top quality, export-standard, certified organic milk from a single local herd of Ayrshire cows. They collected the milk early each morning as the cows were being milked, and started pasteurising it within an hour. They batched pasteurise, meaning maximum goodness was retained, and used non-animal rennet. The cheese was all made by hand and aged on site.
Their range of cheeses grew over the years, as did their collection of awards, including from the prestigious International Cheese Awards in Nantwich, England. They had a mischievous side too – it must have been that grinning gecko – with cheeses like Hatea Ma, which was a white Red Leicester style.
Their sense of whānau was also typical of committed artisans. They worked to guidelines they set to give the wairua of Grinning Gecko, being firmly anchored in Northland but providing cheese across Aotearoa and overseas.
Grinning Gecko stopped producing cheese in early 2023, their cheeses are a big loss to the NZ cheese scene and to The Cheese Wheel whānau.
