“We have a lot of support from Balibased chefs, restaurants and hotels. They are dedicated in sourcing locally made products and supporting local food producers. In turn, their efforts inspired me to keep growing Gioia Cheese. In a couple of months, I will open Kilometer Zero in Canggu. It is a shop dedicated to locally made products, be it cheese, ham or beauty products. It will be proof that with a little bit of passion and work, we can make anything here.” - Ilios Maggi Andreadakis
Ilios Maggi Andreadakis has it good. The ItalianGreek professional worked in the finance industry and spent his time jet-setting between Shanghai and Milan. However, his mother lives in Bali and he decided to move his family there while working remotely and taking care of the operations in Bangalore and Shanghai offices. Then, he came across an opportunity of investing in a cheese factory in Bali. “From my understanding and past experience in managing portfolios, food companies are not really affected by economic crisis. So, when I had the opportunity to invest in Gioia Cheese, I thought, why not?” says Andreadakis.
Although he had the factory machinery, he had no expertise in cheesemaking. Andreadakis took over the company in 2016 and picked up a course in cheesemaking with Carlo Piccoli in the respected Academia Internazionale Dell’Arte Casearia, San Pietro di Felleto, Italy. An awardwinning master cheese maker, Piccoli is the fourth-generation cheesemaker from Perenzin Latteria, a cheesemaking company and institution established in 1898. Sourcing fresh milk from Malang and sea salt from Amed, Andreadakis managed to create a wide repertoire of flavours. Fresh cheeses or pasta filata such as mozzarella, bocconcini, stracciatella, burrata and halloumi are produced daily in Gioia Cheese’s factory in North Kuta. In the ageing room sits plump yellow wheels of the aged varieties such as Asiatico (Gioia Cheese’s own Asiago), Scamorza, Saporito, Ricotta, and Andreadakis’s pride and joy - the Drunken Cheese or Ubriaco. Made from locally produced red wine, the cheese is ready to be savoured in one month's time.
“We have a lot of support from Bali-based chefs, restaurants and hotels. They are dedicated in sourcing locally made products and supporting local food producers. In turn, their efforts inspired me to keep growing Gioia Cheese. In a couple of months, I will open Kilometer Zero in Canggu. It is a shop dedicated to locally made products, be it cheese, ham or beauty products. It will be proof that with a little bit of passion and work, we can make anything here,” says Andreadakis.
