If you are like me, you love cheese. If you are like me in additional ways, you also have a fairly skeptical eye when it comes to new cheeses. After a #blessed life of Taleggios, Comtés, Quadrello di Buffalos, Stiltons, Brie de Meaux, Cabra Romero, Montenebro, Farmhouse Cheddars, and, and… well I mean can it really get better? Is there better cheese out there? Forget better, is there other cheese out there that is still worth taking a financial risk on? What if it’s bad? Or, well, just forgettable?
The world is on fire, and these are my concerns.
I’ve ranted here before about how cheese + (alien substance x) generally gets the hard end of my judging judgment, as a truly great cheese would be able to stand by itself without adornment of bunches of black truffle, or seasonings thrown on top, etc etc. But! There are exceptions to this rule, and a good thing too. Otherwise we would not have the wonderful treat that is Wiesenblumenkäse, or the other Blumenkäse of its ilk. Yes, there is a whole ilk of this stuff. Wiese means field, Blume means flower, and Käse means cheese. I truly love the German language.
In another rant, on another day, I’ll have to drop a little German language knowledge, and see how long and funny of a cheese name we can come up with.
Origin: Switzerland? Thiesen?
Milk: Cow
Affinage: 6-8 months
Notes:
There are really just dried flower petals pressed all over the rind. Not rotten, but dried. There are very sporadic and small holes in the paste and tiny calcium crystals, so there is a lot going on here.
Thoughts:
Butterfat is the first thing you notice, as it immediately washes the palate in a rich wave of creamy goodness. For a ‘schnittkäse’, it is really very soft and bursts with floral flavors, that very butterfat being the perfect solution to draw out the floral notes. Not sweet like some fatty cheeses, it is savory with a full mouth feel. Herbal, with an aftertaste of onions and chives. Every now and then you get a bite of a piece of dried flower petal that has fallen from the rind, adding texture and a reminder of the flower petals from which the cheese gets its name. It does not have the gooey texture and salty pungency of other savory delights like Taleggio, but still delivers a complex experience that demands your full attention. Keep a bit of apple or wine on hand, because you will want something to cut through the fat in order to enjoy the third bite as much as you do the first. That being said, your breath may smell richly like cheese after this one. Like dried flowers and dried milk and more curdled and cut and aged milk.
Schnittkäse is one of a number of German language terms for cheese that do not translate directly into the English I grew up with. Cutting cheese? Cheese that can be sliced? Semi-firm cheese that lends itself well to slicing? There is a similar question about as to what Bergkäse means. What is and what is not a Bergkäse. Then again... myself and others grew up with the phrase 'Swiss Cheese', which is about as airtight a designator as... well... as Swiss cheese?
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