By Austin Coe Butler
Weighing in at a truly colossal 225 pounds, the Gotthelf Slow Food Emmentaler is by far the biggest cheese to have graced our shop. That’s almost three times as heavy as a wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano or Gruyère. It rightfully deserves its stately place in our cheese vault that you can see upon entering the shop. But what’s even more impressive than its stature is its fidelity to traditional practices that make it a delicious piece of living history.
One of the immediate distinguishing features of the cheese is the gorgeous silhouette on top that recounts the tale Die Käserei der Vehfreude, or “The Cheese Factory in Vehfreude,” by Jeremias Gotthelf, a Swiss pastor and writer, whose name the cheese bears in his honor. In the story, the fictional village of Vehfreude is badly in need of a school, but instead constructs a cheese factory to compete economically with its neighboring villages. Vehfreude is set in the Emmen valley (Emmentaler literally means to “someone or something from the Emmen valley) and the cheese the villagers make is, naturally, Emmentaler. Among the comic episodes are market riots over the price of milk, a young woman who believes she is practicing witchcraft being scared straight by a villager dressed as Beelzebub, and the story Felix and Änneli, two star crossed lovers of differing classes. It’s a tale of the greed of man and the triumph of love. And also cheese! The wheel also carries details of the heraldic bear of Bern, Edelweisses, and the Swiss cross at the base of a Blockbau, a traditional Emmental farmhouse. Circling the wheel is a line of cows being led by a cowherd symbolizing the transhumance to the Alpine dairy.
Husband and wife Bernard Meier and Marlies Zaugg make Gotthelf Emmentaler just like the villagers of Vehfreude did back in the 17th century. Isolated in the mountains of their small village, Hüpfenboden, they make just two wheels of cheese a day. That 225 pounds of cheese is condensed from more than 1,100 liters of milk(!). It’s made using kettle whey cultures, wherein the whey from the previous day’s batch of cheese is added to the present day’s milk, carrying over the cultures (like a sourdough starter). Once the cheese is made, it’s taken to Gourmino’s cellars to age under the watchful eyes of the affineurs, tending to the wheels by washing and flipping them. In recognition of the traditional practices this cheese follows, the Slow Food Presidia bestowed an award on traditional Emmentaler.
The struggle to open a 225 pound wheel of cheese is one of the greatest a cheesemonger can face. Certain exigencies immediately presented themselves and could not be ignored. First of all, the cheese was too large to store in any of our refrigerators, which meant that after a day of tempering, we needed to break it into more manageable pieces. The weight meant that this cheese had to be handled by three people, which was further complicated when we realized we could not get it through the door to the cheese shop! Instead we had to right the wheel up on its rounded edge, precariously balancing it on a flatbed to pull it into the shop, and during our first attempt to do this it stubbornly rolled to the floor with a colossal thud. Cutting a cheese this big is also tricky. Driving a chisel knife through the cheese require my full weight, and, normally, after this initial cut a wire could be dragged through it to easily split it. However, we were out of our larger, longer wires, so it had to be cut with the chisel knife all the way through, a more “historic” way to cut a historic cheese. But as soon as the cheese was cracked an incredible smell rose up and the “eyes” or holes in the cheese begins to “cry.”
What does a two hundred pound wheel of cheese taste like? Rich brown butter, toasted cashew, wheat bread, a fresh potato loaf. Even for those that dislike Emmentaler, Gotthelf lacks that distinct “Swiss-y” flavor that is imparted by the Proprionibacteria, the bacteria responsible for producing the signature “eyes” or holes in Emmentaler. Many of us have been exposed to bad “Swiss” cheese as a result of the nefarious business practices of the Swiss cheese Cartels, and the imagine of a deli slice of pallid, plasticine “Swiss” cheese comes to mind. It’s pleasantly surprising then that Gotthelf Emmental is dense, with a cashew-like creaminess and studded with tyrosine crystals while still having the pliability that makes it a phenomenal melter. It is one of the finest expressions of Emmentaler, and an urgent reminder of what makes real Emmentaler such a special cheese whose traditions are worth preserving in the era of globalization.
This promotion couldn’t come at a better time—last week, Gotthelf Emmentaler won a Super Gold at the World Champion Cheese Competition in Trondheim! Stop into the shop to try the best “Swiss” cheese in the world!
