Bad Tölz Käsefestival and Horse Cheese!!!!

No dear reader, your eyes do not deceive you. Horse cheese. Cheese from milk that came from a horse.
I had honestly not thought I would ever find myself tasting horse cheese, but on a recent expedition to a cheese festival here in Bavaria I stumbled upon a stand with large images of horses and a carefully arranged samples table. It was like magic.
It started with a notification from a social networking site (which shall remain nameless) that a friend had found a cheese festival in the lovely state of Bavaria. This being just the sort of shenanigan that I like to sink my teeth into I quickly made it priority 1A, because the life of an exchange student is so very busy and difficult that using numbers alone doesn't suffice. Once it had been properly ranked I set about waiting, or should I say I sat about waiting, because alas this festival was 2 or 3 grueling months away.

One study abroad advertisement montage later it was finally time to go, so off I went with a cadre of fellow cheese pilgrims to a magical city called Bad Tölz. Taking full advantage of Germany's stellar network of trains we arrived in the early afternoon and followed the signs for Käsefestival, or Cheese festival, until our noses took over and brought us home. Talk about a cheese festival. This place had everything. French cheeses. German cheeses. A herd of cows. Swiss cheeses. Older folks with lots of money buying entire baskets of cheese and bottles and bottles of wine from the wine sampling tent. Me trying to figure out what limb I could sell to afford more than one or two morsels. A little baby sleigh carrying kiddies being pulled goats.

It was really impressive, and each little stall had its own specialties on offer, some with samples already cut up on offer and others requiring a little more courage. A friend asked if I felt bad about sampling loads of cheese that I knew I wouldn't be able to purchase.... nope. My intentions were relatively pure; I knew I was buying something from the festival and I'd be gosh-darned if I were not going to make a fully educated decision. Made the mistake of asking "Parmigiano Reggiano di Bufala?" to a very Italian stall and was met with a stream of Italian until the stout Italian yeoman realized I don't speak Italian beyond the names of cheeses. It was singularly delicious and, had I brought the funds to go about purchasing recklessly expensive cheese, I would certainly have a wheel of it in my dorm right now. Alas.
What took the proverbial (cheese?)cake, though, was easily the stand with the pictures of horses all over it. Not a usual sight at a cheese festival. Intrigued and slightly afraid I approached the friendly rep and inquired as to whether or not they had taken pictures of the wrong mammal for their signs. They had not. What the folks at St. Leonhards in the Bavarian Alps have done is the unthinkable, the unspeakable: they have made horse cheese.

Sad horse wishes his milk had more casein...

Kind of.
You see, dear reader, the problem with horse milk is that it does not contain sufficient levels of casein to properly curdle and so to form cheeses. The solution that these brave Bavarians came up with was to mix it with goat's milk to a ratio of two parts goat milk one part horse milk. Horse milk must be some potent stuff, because believe you me does the flavor ever come through. Not only did they have their Frankenstinian creations on display, but another product that I had not yet tried, and by the looks of the still closed sample bottle neither had anyone else that day. I speak here of whey. Bottled horse whey. Organic bottled horse whey. The website (warning, you are entering a foreign language zone) raves about the health benefits, as do the number of fliers and sheets they distribute with their products, but from the start what got me (ok, along with the novelty) was that it just tasted good. So good I ended up buying some. For sale they had Frischkäse, Weichkäse, Camembert, and Molke, or quasi-cream cheese, soft cheese similar to unbrined feta,........ Camembert......, and Whey for the German-impaired. I would have liked to see a gouda or maybe something reminiscent of an Italian Toma, but I'm sure they're in the works.

Vote Bob Saget in 2012

Some of the benefits of this horse milk, which is lauded as a source of nutrition centuries old and better in many ways than cow milk, include a superior supply of vitamins, Omega-3s, and other immune system helpers. Oh, and then there's the benefit of being able to say "Hey Freddy, like that bagel? Yeah? Enjoying that cream cheese? Yeah? Ya, ya know that's horse cheese you're eating?" and then posting the ensuing shenanigans to youtube or Funniest Home Videos or something. I don't know.
Where was I...
Horse cheese. I decided to buy their Weichkäse and, as an added bonus for just generally being a swell fellow, the stout yeoman in charge threw in some of the quasi-cream cheese as a gift. Little did he know he was earning that much more free publicity, on this blog that literally tens of people each day stumble upon whilst Google searching for funny images of owls!
All joking aside the folks managing the StuZi (short for Stuten- and Ziegenmilch or horse and goat milk) booth were really helpful and very informative on the methods and advantages of their product and after reading through their literature I muss say I'm very impressed. I won't be holding my breath for horse cheese craze to sweep the nation, but they have a tidy operation running and have already been far more successful than I would have thought possible.  Good on them, I say.
The other cheese I purchased will be reviewed shortly, and though I don't have as complete a backstory on them suffice to say their cheese won me over the second I tried it. A busy stall from western Switzerland, they had an Emmenthaler, a blue cheese, some salami, and a fresh cheese on display, and all of it was divine. I was a sucker for the blue cheese, though, and was overjoyed to find how much my measly 3 Euros bought me. A veritable loaf. You'll see that blue cheese soon, dear reader, but today let's talk horse cheese some more. To close up this tips section, a picture of The Function Cheese Addict enjoying some food that is definitely real and not a poster oh-so-cleverly framed. Doesn't this just make you want to go to a cheese festival?