Alice, founder of New Zealand's first vegan cheese company, explores the joys and challenges of this fascinating food.
Part memoir, part manifesto, part practical guide, this book is for everyone who wants to live a little more kindly and is open to seeing cheese in a new light.

An excerpt from the introduction to 'Cheese Matters':
"Dairy cheese is delicious: I love the flavour, the texture, the aroma and the happy memories it evokes from decades of enjoying cheese-based meals with friends and family. But I do not love its massive negative impacts—on animals, on the climate, and on our shared future. Learning about those impacts changed everything for me.
"In 2006 I prioritised my heart and my head over my habits and became vegan. Although I “gave up” meat and cheese and other animal products, it never felt like a sacrifice to me: going vegan was surprisingly easy and deeply effective. As well as farmed animals, I’m saving land, water, greenhouse gas emissions and wild animals.
"For me it was a speedy switch—within six weeks my perspective pivoted from “Vegans are weird, attention-seeking extremists” to “Everybody should go vegan, it’s amazing!”. And within a year I had started the business which would become the first vegan cheese brand in Aotearoa New Zealand.
"I was painfully shy and slightly weird, so taking on the powerful dairy industry of Aotearoa was perhaps a strange choice. But I think that the little weirdo I was back then would be proud of what we’ve achieved so far."