Certainly, when it comes to cheese, North Rhine-Westphalia is not the first thing that comes to mind. More like Switzerland or France. Or Italy and the Netherlands. And when it comes to cheese from Germany, Bavaria is at the top. But there are also cheese dairies in NRW whose products are appreciated by gourmets.
The small, round pieces of cheese from Nieheim in the district of Höxter in East Westphalia have achieved a certain degree of fame. This low-fat sour milk cheese, once made in dozens of factories, is now only produced by a single cheese dairy. An entire festival is now dedicated to him for this, the Nieheim cheese market, which is now taking place again after a Corona break. The Nieheim cheese is even legally protected: only cheese from Nieheim can be called Nieheim cheese. But there are many other interesting cheese dairies in the state (the NRW cheese compass lists around two dozen, kaesekompass-nrw.de). We present two particularly unusual companies.
Behind an old wooden gate, the path leads into an old mining tunnel, water drips from the rock, runs in a trickle along the old tracks, on which a few rusty carts are still standing. Then an iron door, behind it lies the former explosives chamber. And now you notice it, that cheesy smell. Farmer Stefan Belke from Winkhausen near Schmallenberg in Sauerland has been producing a Gouda-style raw milk cheese for twelve years. So far so good. But then he had the idea of letting his cheese mature in this tunnel, where slate was mined until the 1950s.
How do you come up with something like that? Firstly because the tunnel belongs to a friend. Secondly, because Belke wants to “represent the history of the Sauerland” with his cheese, as he says. “We Sauerlanders have a very close relationship to our nature and our history.” This includes slate mining, but also agriculture and dairy cow farming. With his stollen cheese he could combine the two tedious, typical Sauerland professions, so the idea.
So much for the philosophical superstructure. In practice, the whole thing is still an experiment even after two years, says Belke. How is the cheese developing down there? After how many months of aging does it taste best? Stefan Belke gives him at least three months. “I would like to leave some of them longer, the first batches are really promising.” In any case, the cheese develops completely differently than in a normal cold room, where after a while a hard rind forms and the cheese becomes hard cheese.
“In the stollen, it stays soft like butter cheese, even after months, the cheese doesn’t ripen as quickly,” says Belke, “that’s also due to the extreme humidity in the stollen.” So anti-aging for the cheese. And presumably another bacterial culture will also develop, and this is decisive for the taste of a cheese, “every maturing cellar has its very own bacterial culture”.
In any case, the taste of this Stollen experiment is promising: Belke’s Glück-Auf-Käse is nutty and creamy at the same time, spicy and creamy, intense but still fine.
The Mölders family, who run the Kragemann farm near Bocholt, do not follow the usual path to cheese production either. Around twenty years ago, the Mölders bought water buffalo because these robust cattle, which are not sensitive to moisture, are good landscapers – and ideally suited to keeping some ecologically valuable wetlands close to the border with the Netherlands free of forest. “We currently have a herd of around 140 water buffaloes,” says Silvia Mölders. Two bulls take care of the offspring. And after the birth of the calves, the water buffalo cows give milk.
The Mölders came up with the idea of processing this milk into cheese while sitting in an Italian restaurant and being told that the original buffalo mozzarella from the southern Italian region of Campania is made from milk from water buffalo. “So we thought, we can do that too,” says Silvia Mölders.
Now she always keeps around 50 animals that are giving milk near the barn. “We have a milking robot there, which the water buffalo cows accepted well after initial skepticism.” Water buffalo may look wild, but they are sensitive, calm and relaxed, the farmer asserts. And once the animals have gained confidence and are used to a new situation, they are easy to work with.
The Mölders have the buffalo milk processed by nearby cheese dairies into semi-hard cheese, Brie, buffalo mozzarella, burrata and ricotta. For some people in the region, the sight of water buffalo certainly took some getting used to, says Silvia Mölders. But the buffalo mozzarella from local production has never had any problems with acceptance. “It has long since found buyers and lovers.”