Sensing Up

About Sensing Up

A wine, cheese and food podcast hosted by Valérie Henbest, Chevalier of the National Order of Agricultural Merit. Sharpen your tastebuds, fine-tune your eardrums and listen with all five senses. Join Valérie to explore the stories, the producers and craft behind exceptional food and wine, from the Good Food & Wine Show to conversations with winemakers, cheesemakers and chefs shaping Australia's food scene. Valérie is the founder of Smelly Cheese Co., importing and curating cheese from small producers around the world from her home at Adelaide Central Market. Sensing Up features luxury food recommendations and practical wine and cheese pairing that you can recreate at home. Sensing Up - a podcast of 'ideas worth tasting'. Shop: https://smellycheese.co • Instagram: https://instagram.com/smellycheeseco • Facebook: https://facebook.com/SmellyCheeseCo

Publisher

Smelly Cheese Co.

Category

arts · education

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

14 Aug 2023

Latest episode

29 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

45 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   29 Sept 2026

   Bold Palates: The History of Australian Cuisine with Barbara Santich

   Every dish carries a history, and every tradition we call authentic is the product of people, place and time meeting at the table. In this episode of Sensing Up, food is explored through the lens of history and culture, from the first colonial kitchens of Sydney and Hobart to the convent pantries of eighteenth-century Provence. Barbara Santich is Professor Emeritus at the University of Adelaide, where she established the graduate program in gastronomy, and one of Australia's most respected food historians. Trained first in agricultural science, she followed a fascination with language and France to the Sorbonne, then to a doctorate on the cuisine of medieval Mediterranean France. She is the author of nine books, among them Bold Palates: Australia's Gastronomic Heritage, shortlisted for the 2013 Prime Minister's Literary Awards. At the heart of Barbara's work is a clear conviction: "The culture belongs to the people. The land produces the resources." Australian food culture, in her view, has been taking shape for a century and a half. It was built by settlers who adopted and adapted what they found, from kangaroo steamer and fish cooked in paper bark to the picnic that became the chop picnic and, in time, the barbecue. Even the sausage sizzle, which left a newly arrived Valérie thoroughly bewildered, turns out to be a far younger tradition than most would guess. Traditions evolve gradually, one small element set aside and another added, which is why she locates food culture in living traditions and regional specialties, each one still in motion. Books discussed in this episode: Bold Palates: Australia's Gastronomic Heritage (Wakefield Press) https://www.wakefieldpress.com.au/product/bold-palates/ The Original Mediterranean Cuisine (Wakefield Press) https://www.wakefieldpress.com.au/authors/barbara-santich/ Eating in Eighteenth-Century Provence: The Evolution of a Tradition (Bloomsbury Academic) https://www.amazon.com.au/Eating-Eighteenth-Century-Provence-Evolution-Tradition/dp/1350329940 Valérie Henbest is a French cheese specialist born in Normandie. Her fine foods company, Smelly Cheese Co., based at the Adelaide Central Market, imports over 10 tonnes of French cheese monthly. She was awarded the French National Order of Agricultural Merit in 2023 and inducted into the Guilde Internationale des Fromagers, Paris. Sensing Up is a space to slow down, pay attention and let the senses lead. Shop: smellycheese.co | Instagram: smellycheeseco | Facebook: SmellyCheeseCo

2. 

   2 Sept 2026

   Sweet Carribie: Carribie Mineral Water with Damien Smith

   Water is rarely spoken of in terms of vintage or terroir, unless a source is distinctive enough to demand the vocabulary usually reserved for wine. This episode of Sensing Up turns that vocabulary toward a spring on the Yorke Peninsula, where a family has spent nearly two decades learning to taste, describe and finally bottle what lies beneath their land. Damien Smith is the founder and custodian of Carribie Mineral Water, drawn from a single aquifer on his family's remote property on South Australia's Yorke Peninsula. Carribie takes its name from the local word for where the emu drinks, honouring the flora and fauna of the land it comes from. Damien's background is in wine, including a career that began with Moët Hennessy Australia in the early 2000s, and it is that palate, trained on champagne and fine wine, that first recognised the property's water as something worth taking seriously. Together with his wife Gretchen, who is training to become Australia's first female water sommelier, he is building what they describe as the world's first terroir mineral water estate for gastronomy and wellness. Tasted from a wine glass rather than a tumbler, Carribie's structure becomes obvious: an initial sweetness from natural sodium chloride carried in on sea spray, a savoury, almost umami mid-palate, and a lingering, faintly glycerous finish that coats rather than simply passes over the tongue. Valérie and Damien tasted both the still and sparkling expressions side by side, drawing direct comparisons to the front, mid and back palate structure more usually discussed in fine wine and champagne, and arriving, glass in hand, at the same conclusion: a source this distinctive earns the language of terroir. Carribie Mineral Water is the Yorke Peninsula estate producing Australia's first terroir-driven mineral water, drawn from a single ancient aquifer near the family's coastal property. Water featured in this episode: Carribie Mineral Water Still: https://carribie.com/products/carribie-mineral-water-still Carribie Mineral Water Sparkling: https://carribie.com/products/carribie-mineral-water-sparkling Valérie Henbest is a French-Australian cheese specialist born in Normandie. Imports 10+ tonnes of French cheese monthly, sells at Smelly Cheese Shop, Adelaide Central Market. French National Order of Agricultural Merit 2023. Inducted into Guilde Internationale des Fromagers, Paris. Sensing Up is a space to slow down, pay attention and let the senses lead. Shop: smellycheese.co (https://smellycheese.co) | Instagram: smellycheeseco | Facebook: SmellyCheeseCo

3. 

   12 Aug 2026

   Deciphering Nature: Dilmah Teas with Dilhan Fernando

   Tea has quietly become one of the clearest signals of where wellness culture is heading, and Dilmah has spent forty years proving that an ethical, family-run business creating a superior product is a recipe for success. Dilhan Fernando returns to Sensing Up as Chairman and CEO of Dilmah, the Ceylon tea house his father, Merrill J. Fernando, built from a single conviction that tea should carry the name of its origin rather than disappear into a blend. Dilhan still walks the gardens and picks the leaf himself, understands the biochemistry behind a bright cup as fluently as the ceremony of drinking one, and holds an adjunct professorship in sustainability at Edith Cowan University alongside his role at the company. Underneath all of it sits a working philosophy Dilhan returns to more than once: value has to be created for people and for nature before a business has earned the right to create it for itself. Anything else, he says plainly, is parasitic. It is a hard line to hold in an industry built on margin, and rarer still to hear a CEO say it out loud. The tasting brought the two crafts together properly. Valérie poured Dilmah's Paradise Breakfast, a Ceylon black tea lifted with real turmeric, Ceylon cinnamon, ginger and a whisper of pepper, alongside a wedge of Reypenaer XO, a Gouda aged three years in Amsterdam until it turns to caramel, cognac and walnut. The spice in the tea met the cheese's sweetness somewhere in the middle, and what followed was less a pairing than a small proof of Dilhan's own argument, that when something is grown and made with attention, it doesn't need to compete with what sits beside it. Dilmah is a family-run Ceylon tea house specialising in single-origin tea, founded by Merrill J. Fernando and now led by his son, Dilhan. Tea in this episode: Paradise Breakfast: Ceylon black tea with turmeric, cinnamon and ginger https://shop.dilmahtea.com.au/collections/wellness/products/dilmah-paradise-breakfast-ceylon-black-tea-with-turmeric-ceylon-cinnamon-ginger-40-tea-bags Paired with Reypenaer XO, 36-month aged Gouda https://smellycheese.co/products/reypenaer-xo-36-months Valérie Henbest is a French-Australian cheese specialist born in Normandie. Imports 10+ tonnes of French cheese monthly, sells at Smelly Cheese Shop, Adelaide Central Market. French National Order of Agricultural Merit 2023. Inducted into Guilde Internationale des Fromagers, Paris. Sensing Up is a space to slow down, pay attention and let the senses lead. Shop: smellycheese.co (https://smellycheese.co) | Instagram: smellycheeseco | Facebook: SmellyCheeseCo

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Spotify

5.0 / 5

4 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 46 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

68

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

60

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Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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