Tag Archives: wine and cheese

Cheatin’ in the kitchen

Winey Tawny Cheese

Over the years, I’ve tasted a number of boozy cheeses: port-soaked Stilton, Red Windsor, Italian wine-washed cheese and the like. They are not commonly available and when they are, they tend to be very expensive, so I thought, how hard would it be to make my own?

For the first experiment, I cut a one-kilogram block of cheddar into 2.5mm slices. These I pierced with a stainless steel skewer, put into a glass container and just covered with a decent shiraz. On went the lid and the container went into the fridge. After 10 days, I drained the cheese, patted it dry and tried a slice. Not bad, not great. The cheese taste came through with an edge of shiraz fruit but the dry wine made the aftertaste somewhat hard.

I tried the same technique with a tawny port and also with an oloroso sherry. The oloroso was good – a distinct smooth, nutty sherry component complementing the cheddar flavour, but with alcohol too dominant.

The tawny cheese was a great success. Porty aromatics interwove with and offset sharpish cheddar flavours. Somehow, the result was both sweet and savoury at the same time, with just a hint of alcohol hovering in the background. A friend who tried it asked where he could buy some.

Eking in

I love Blue Stilton. It’s so expensive though that I rarely buy it – like $70-ish a kilo at the local supermarket. Then I found some at Aldi for approximately $26 the kilo so I bought a few wedges.

But how to make it last? Ever thrifty, I hit on the technique of cutting it with butter. Here’s how.

Take a piece of room temperature Stilton (rind and all) and mash it gently with half its weight in room temperature unsalted butter. Gently now, try to preserve a few blue crumbs of identifiable cheese in the mix, you don’t want a paste. (Keeps well in fridge.) Continue reading →

A visit to a Swiss alpine fromagerie

Friend and cheesemaker Christian Nobel, writes about his family’s recent trip from Australia to visit relatives in Switzerland.

The mountain path

We start at the valley bottom very early in the morning. The weather forecast is great and although there is no indication yet of the rising sun, the mountains are starting to appear as the darkness disappears. After a strenuous passage through a dense pine forest, we continue up a rocky path that has never seen a car or truck before.

These alpine trails are only for hikers or one or two wild alpine farmers riding motor bikes, which have been specifically adjusted for crazy and steep paths. Up in these high alpine areas, one either walks, or if available, transports goods by aerial ropeway or even by helicopter.

Continue reading →