Cheese cheese and more cheese tasting at Reypenaer in Amsterdam

So this week I have been at an Artisan Food Production course at the Sarah Baker Cookery School, in Cloughjordan.In the first two days we have been looking at making youghurt, cream, butter and cheese. I’ve had a bit of a dairy overdose as we have been tasting all the different types of  products.

What really fascinated me was the cheese making and how there are so many variations of a simple process of separating whey and curd. It has been a joy to  make, talk and learn about food all day.

All this talk about cheese has brought back a visit to a cheese house in Amsterdam. I have been to a good few wine tastings but never to a cheese tasting before this one. I thought it was a great idea and it would be a great way of promoting Irish cheese and a way of showing off what’s out there. There is a cheese shop in Charleville County Cork which I must go visit.

On a Saturday morning we went to the Reypenaer shop in Singel, along one of Amsterdam's old city center canals.Reypenaer  cheese two-time Supreme Champion winner at the Nantwich International Cheese Show .

Reypenaer cheese, is an artisanal Gouda made from grass feed cows made in a traditional way and matured in the natural way.The family behind Reypenaer cheeses believe their cheese needs time to get to the right quality to get to the right taste, so if you quicken the process you lose taste and flavour, eg. a cheese that has been 6 months differ distinctly from one that has been maturing for four weeks. Young cheese is soft and more mature is harder; young cheese is at the beginning loose moist and with time and all the flavours get concentrated as the cheese becomes drier. 

These cheeses are stored in a traditional warehouse with 17000 cheeses, where the temperature fluctuations are more natural than in the modern ones: in the summer when the temperature rises the cheese lose moisture and get warm. This moisture has to be cleaned off, and this is all done by hand.

 

The above cheese guillotine was very useful in taking slithers of this 2 ½ old mature cheese. The idea is that the slither should melt in your mouth and you then wash it down with a port. This enhances and brings  out the full flavour of both.

In this cheese tasting we got to try a selection of mature and very mature Gouda  chervre’s. We also tasted a mature and very mature selection of cows Gouda  from 6 month old to 2 1/2 year old and with a  with white red and port wine selected to suit each type of cheese .

All in all it was a great experience and an education to the palate.