Kris Lloyd, the award-winning cheesemaker behind Woodside Cheese Wrights, has spent the past few years developing The Monet Collection, a colourful, edible interpretation of the things she loves most about Claude Monet’s work.
What began with a single flower-covered goat cheese has since grown into an entire table collection, spanning crackers, flatbreads, finishing salt, butter and cheese knives.
“I have always been drawn to Monet’s use of colour and the way he captures the beauty of a moment, whether it is light on water, flowers in a garden or the changing seasons,” Kris said.
“His garden at Giverny is stunning because it was not just something he painted. It was something he imagined, planted and nurtured before translating it onto canvas.”
Kris is particularly drawn to Monet’s famous water lily paintings and the way they appear soft and romantic from a distance, before revealing layers of unexpected colour, movement and texture up close.
It is an approach she also brings to food, where beauty is only part of the experience, with depth, flavour and an element of surprise just as important.
That creative philosophy has become the foundation of The Monet Collection, with each piece designed to feel like part of a larger experience rather than simply another product.
At the heart of the collection is Monet Goat Cheese, a flower-covered artisan cheese that set the tone for everything that followed.
Edible flowers became a way of bringing the colour and botanical detail found throughout Monet’s work onto the cheeseboard, while the cheese itself remained firmly grounded in Kris’s Adelaide Hills craft.
From there, the collection continued to grow.
Monet Crackers and Flatbreads feature edible flowers and botanical detailing, while Monet Finishing Salt brings another layer of colour, texture and flavour to the table.
There is also Monet Butter, created in collaboration with Pepe Saya and finished with edible flowers, along with Monet Cheese Knives that carry the artistic influence beyond the food itself.
Together, the pieces are designed to create a complete Monet-inspired table, where food, design and storytelling all come together.
Seasonality plays an important role in the collection, with Kris choosing flowers and botanicals based not only on their appearance, but on how their flavours work together.
“The collection uses edible flowers and botanicals that are in season. This is incredibly important to me,” Kris said.
“It’s how I eat and something my grandmother taught me — to respect the seasonality of produce. Beyond that, I choose based on their beauty and their compatibility together as flavours.”
Depending on the time of year, the collection can feature everything from rose petals and calendula to cornflower and borage.
“The colours are very much inspired by a garden rather than being overly arranged or perfectly matched,” Kris said.
“The Monet cheese is made by hand and each one is always different. I just love that, so there almost is no right or wrong.”
That individuality is part of what Kris wants people to notice when the collection reaches the table.
“I want people to pause when it is placed in front of them, take in the colour and detail, and then enjoy sharing it,” she said.
“It is not uncommon for people to comment on the beauty of the collection as a whole and the individual pieces. Each piece on its own holds its own.”
Rather than reproducing a famous Monet painting on a piece of cheese, Kris has taken the elements that made his work so distinctive, colour, gardens, flowers, movement and nature, and interpreted them through a distinctly Adelaide Hills lens.
A little fun fact on the cheese is that King Charles and Camilla tried the Monet Cheese in 2012 at Penfolds Magill Estate.
A century later, Monet’s work continues to inspire creativity in unexpected forms, and for Kris, the centenary is far from the end of The Monet Collection.
“I would love to continue evolving it with new products and seasonal pieces, always centred around cheese, the table, edible flowers and the pleasure of sharing food,” she said.
In fact, another addition to the collection is already on the way.
“Monet returned to the same garden and subjects throughout his life, and he continued to find something new in them,” Kris said.
“I feel the same way about this collection. There are still many ideas left to explore.”
The Monet Collection is available to shop online for delivery within South Australia, or you can find Woodside Cheese Wrights at CheeseFest on October 17 and 18, and at its Woodside cellar door, open daily.
The Monet Collection is available on the Woodside Cheese Wrights website here.
