Meet Breda Butler of the award-winning Cuinneog country butter

Breda Butler’s late father had a favourite saying: “A problem is not a problem; but a challenge,” she smiles.

It’s a mantra she has found herself repeating more than once since being thrust into the driving seat at Cuinneog: the producer of award-winning Irish farmhouse country butter and natural buttermilk, which is as much at home in Michelin-starred kitchens as on the shelves of the multiples. It is a long way from the small hand churn and clinking creamery cans around the stove of the Sharheens’ farmhouse in Co Mayo where Breda was raised.

After her father, Tom, lost his job, he and his wife Sheila turned to making country butter and buttermilk in 1990 using traditional fermentation methods to produce its distinctive lactic tang and texture.

While Breda was involved in the business growing up – for example, she and her husband Colm spent the first summer after college driving the length and breadth of Ireland in a refrigerated van – she spent most of her career working in credit control until returning to Cuinneog almost three years ago.

“Though I was banking on my mentor being here for a lot longer,” she smiles sadly.

While her father had been diagnosed with cancer and informed he also needed a bypass 10 years previously, he had defied all expectations, having initially been given just 18 months to live.

“Dad being dad, he didn’t just lie down and take it,” says Breda. “He was a fighter and there was a way around it. And he continued to fight to the very end.”

Therefore, when he died suddenly of a heart attack last April, it came as a huge shock to the family, with Breda not only having to process her grief but also the fact that she was now in charge at Cuinneog.

“I just couldn’t let it go or say: ‘Well, dad’s gone now, let’s just sell up and forget about it,’” she says. “It would be like another death.”

However, while she is full of praise for Cuinneog’s dedicated team as well as her mother, who looks after the accounts, Breda admits it was a baptism of fire to suddenly become the person with whom the buck stopped for everything.

But one of the greatest lessons she has learned is you can’t do everything yourself and it’s better to ask for help than try to wing it alone.

“You could be trying to find out how to fix a wheel on a table, or a motor on the churn,” she says as an example. “So I’m learning slowly – but surely – that it’s okay not to know everything.”

However, while the initial months after Tom’s death were very challenging, there was a chink of light last summer when Breda discovered that Cuinneog butter had won the prestigious three gold stars at the Great Taste Awards, as well as a place in the top 50 out of 10,000 products entered. This was followed by the Agri, Food or Beverage Award at the Mayo Business Awards just before Christmas.

“To think that something that you start in your kitchen can actually go there,” she says, “it just shows if you have a good product and you put the work in, really there’s nothing stopping you being up there with the rest.”

Of course, Cuinneog has long outgrown the kitchen, with the purpose-built unit and seven staff employed. But the time and care put in to the fermentation and churning process of the creamery milk remains intact. Which probably explains why, in addition to being stocked by Tesco, Dunnes and SuperValu stores as well as independent retailers, you are just as likely to find Cuinneog in the kitchen of restaurants including the Michelin-starred Chapter 1, Aniar and Loam.

Indeed, Breda and her team have invested a lot of effort in promoting country butter and buttermilk to a younger audience through tastings and shows – she explains that popular uses include pancakes and desserts like panna cotta – while last spring saw their first shipment of buttermilk to Dubai, with the Great Taste Awards opening doors in UK.

New products

And Cuinneog is now looking forward to launching new products on the retail market, such as their fermented cream that has already proven popular with chefs.

Needless to say, it’s been a whirlwind of a year, especially as Breda also has three children – Lara, Colm and Sarah – to consider.

“I have a start time and a finish time – but that’s not to say when I finish that I’m not still reading emails or taking phone calls or thinking about it, but I’m at home,” she says, of trying to strike the balance.

“But it definitely is a challenge and sometimes you nearly feel guilty for not being here or there. That’s why you have to be so disciplined and say: ‘I’m not going to make the football match today, but I’ll be there next week.’ And I think delegation is a big part of it.

“I would be very hands-on, I like to do stuff myself, I like to get stuck in; but I’m learning to delegate.”

But it’s not the only lesson Breda has learned.

“I’ve also found out that I’m a little bit stronger than I thought I was,” she says.

“I have to decide and there’s nobody to fall back on. If it’s not the right decision, there’s nobody to blame only myself; but when it is the right decision, it is a great feeling.”

We reckon Tom would approve.

“He’s still working from above,” smiles Breda. “I believe that 100%.”

For further information or stockist details, visit www.cuinneog.com or call 094-9031-425.