Alp Blossom, Glorious Alp Blossom
After last week’s newsletter, it’s a little hard to transition back to writing fun things about cheese, but we are a cheese shop with delicious cheese that I really want to tell you about, so here we go… Alp Blossom has caught my eye today, but how could it not?? It is a cheese covered in FLOWERS after all. That’s basically my definition of beauty! We started getting Alp Blossom about four years ago and truthfully, we bought it for its looks. We didn’t look for anything deeper in that cheese. We were being totally superficial. We swiped right without even reading the profile. And it worked! We got a cheese that was gorgeous, yes, but also friggin delicious.
Albert Kraus at the Hofkäserei Kraus in Bavaria makes Alp Blossom using milk from his brother’s and his neighbor’s herds of Brown Swiss cows that graze less than four miles down the road from the creamery. It is aged for about seven months to maintain the smooth, semi-firm texture while also giving the cheese time to develop flavor. At this point, Alp Blossom is dunked in a tub of flowers and herbs plucked from the surrounding Alpine meadows (I would like to be dunked in that tub) and cheesemakers press the flora onto the rind. The variety of plants changes with the season and can include marigolds, rose, lavender, parsley, rosemary, cornflower, garlic, oregano, and savory. This winter we had a wheel that was especially heavy on the oregano and it tasted like pizza! Even though the coating is only on the outside, the flavors still permeate the paste for an herbaceous, buttery, caramelized onion taste. Ooowee it is tasty, cheese fans! Christine, a friend of the shop, made the most amazing grilled pizza topped with Alp Blossom. I remember walking onto her porch, smelling the toasty grilled cheese smell on the gentle summer breeze. She handed me a glass of the cold, effervescent, berry juice that is Meinklang Rosé, a slice of crispy, cheesy, herbal Alp Blossom pizza, and thus it was a perfect summer night… Let’s have more of those, shall we?
For the love of cheese and Alp Blossom moments,
Kiri
P.S. Thank you to everyone who read the newsletter last week and emailed us or commented on it. We all really appreciate your outreach with support, new ideas, questions, and suggestions. Thank you for taking the time to help us improve our shop and our industry! Onward!
