Cheese review No. 2 - Castello Saga Classic

I was going to do the Norwegian cheddar as my second cheese review to compare it with the Cathedral City, but I couldn't find it in the shop. Castello Saga Classic was on offer so I got that instead. It was 40% off because it goes out of date today, so I'm expecting it to be fully ripe and tasty. I haven't had it before, but I have had a couple of Castello's other cheeses before and generally enjoyed them as far as I can remember. I usually like blue cheeses, but I'm a little wary of ones I haven't tried. There's a certain flavour you sometimes get with them that I find a bit unpleasant. I once had a fairly cheap dolce latte from Tesco and that had the flavour I don't like in it. Kind of a metallic type flavour that burns your mouth. Weird, and for now, quite irrelevant.

Bit of an Intro
Castello was founded in 1893 by a Danish man, who's son bought a Swedish dairy and made some cheese. The company is now owned by Arla Foods, a Swedish-Danish cooperative based in Århus in Denmark. They also own Lurpak which amuses me, but I'm not sure why. Arla Foods is the biggest producer of dairy products in Scandinavia, and the name Arla is from old Swedish and means "early". They produce a range of cheeses, from soft to hard and with varying degrees of mouldiness. Like Cathedral City, it's not exactly an artisan type of a cheese. It's a decent brand that's readily available in most if not all of the supermarkets. Not all the different types of cheese they produce are as readily available, but there's always something from Castello on the cheese shelves.

I've chosen this one because it was 40% off in the supermarket. It goes out of date today, which means they can't sell it tomorrow and they need to get rid of it quick. It cost me 19,38 kr for 200g and is normally 32,30 kr. I still can't quite work out why Norway uses fractions of kroners in the prices when the smallest unit or hard currency is one whole krone. They round to the nearest whole kroner is you pay cash, whether they round up or down, so if I bought three pieces on three separate occasions and paid cash each time I'd save myself almost a krone. If I bought 108 pieces on 108 separate occasions I'd save enough money to buy a 109th piece of cheese. That's not important.

Wikipedia has Castello Saga Classic down as a blue brie, but I haven't come across that anywhere else. The Norwegian version of the Castello website calls it "a classic blue and white veined cheese". Interestingly the UK verison of the website doesn't have Saga Classic, but does have Tickler Cheddar, which is apparently made in Devon. I assume they're appealing to the different markets in Scandinavia and Britain. I might see if I can find some Tickler Chedder next time I'm back in the UK. I haven't seen it here in Norway, which is a bit of a shame.

Saga Classic is made from pasturized cow's milk and cream. The two are mixed and concentrated before pasturizing for some reason. I have no idea why, maybe it saves time, maybe it gives a good flavour or extra creamy texture. Your guess is a good as mine. When the milk and cream mixture begins to separate into curds and whey it's put into plastic cheese moulds where the separation is completed. I don't know what difference that makes, but it's different from the cheddaring I talked about in my Cathedral City review.

Both blue and white mould is used. Blue mould is the kind you get inside cheeses like stilton, and White mould is the kind you get on the outside of unwashed cheese like brie, where it forms that kind of soft white skin. The white mould causes the cheese to mature from the outside in like a brie. The blue mould causes it to mature from the inside out, and gives more of a mouldy flavour. By the way, I looked it up and mould (the blue fuzzy stuff) and mould (the thing they use to shape the cheese) are spelled the same. I hope that doesn't get confusing.

It's a fairly young cheese in more ways than one. It has 15 days in the ripening room after it's made. It's then washed, cut and packed and put in a cooling room for about a week. So it's about three weeks old when it's shipped to the supermarkets. I think if it was much older it's be a bit too liquidy, as it's quite brie like and gets softer rather than harder as it ripens. I assume it ripens twice as quickly because of the two types of mould, but I reckon it proabably goes bad twice as quickly too. I read on Wikipedia that Castello released Saga Classic in 2013, but I just found a video on youtube that they claim to have made to celebrate 25 years of Saga Blue Brie. One of the first things you see in the video is an Arla Foods flag, so I don't know what's going on. Maybe Arla have been producing it for years, but now they own Castello, so Castello are making it for them. I'm not sure, but it's a nice video. Have a watch while you're preparing yourself for the tasting notes. It's only a couple of minutes.

Nice blue brie making video

Now for the proper bit.

Appearance

Before I realized they were calling it a blue brie I wrote in my notes that it looks very like brie on the outside, with that soft white mould skin you get on brie. The white mould is a bit fluffier than I've seen it on a brie. You can also see white and blue mould on the cut face where the paste (the inside bit that's not the rind) is exposed. I don't think they should call it the paste, it doesn't sound very appetizing. "Mmmm, what delicious paste" said no one. Ever. Ok, maybe some cheese experts did, but they're quite an eccentric bunch. Seriously, look around youtube, there are some real characters in the cheese videos.

Looks inviting.

Nice and mouldy.

Body

Again, before I knew people were calling this a blue brie I wrote down that the body is very like a ripe brie. it's soft but holds it's shape when you cut it, and has stickier bits like when brie is nice and soft.

Looks more grey than blue in the picture, but it was kind of blue.

Aroma

Kind of dusty, musty mould smell at first which was very pleasant, but then an amonia smell came in that was a lot like urine and was quite a lot less pleasant. It seemed to be coming mainly from the white mould on the outside of the cheese and it went away after it had been open to the air for a few minutes. Apparently you get a smell of ammonia from bloomy rind cheeses like brie. "Bloomy rind" meaning that the rind is a bloom of bacteria and mould. Essentially the urine-like smell is urine, and comes from all the little germs on the cheese surface. After that I noticed a bit of a woody character to the smell. If I had to say a particular wood I'd say oak, but it was really more of a rotten log kind of smell. Woody and mouldy in a pleasant and musty way.

Texture

Buttery, with a brie like rind. (Because it's blue brie! I'm quite glad I made notes before doing too much research, I noticed all it's brie like qualities. What a cheese genius I am.) The texture was quite uniform throughout the cheese, unlike every other brie I've had which is firmer in the middle. I'm not sure if it was all soft because it was fully ripe and about to start turning bad or if it was softened from the inside by the blue mould. I might buy a fresher piece and see if it has a firm bit in the middle.

Flavour

Not much at first, but you notice the mould after a second or two. It's really more of a mouldy smell than a taste at that point. You taste butter as it warms up a little in your mouth, then the mould comes back with a powerful and long lasting mould taste. It has the woody qualities of the mould aroma, but much deeper. By "deeper" I mean that you kind of experience it low down in your mouth, almost below it in an odd sort of way. Also up in your nose above your mouth. In fact you taste it everywhere except your mouth. It's kind of hard to describe, but it's very satisfying. I got a very slight bitter aftertaste too, but not an unpleasant one.

The Castello website suggested crackers or toasted rye bread. I already had crackers and by chance I'd bought a loaf of rye bread at the supermarket at the same time as buying the cheese. What a stroke of luck. I tried both.

With Crackers

I used Sætres Beste Tynne Speltkjeks, which translates to Sætre's Best Thin Spelt Crackers. They worked very well as then don't really taste of much at all and don't hinder the subtle butter flavour of the cheese or the complexity of the more powerful mould taste. They just add a nice bit of crunch to the texture of the mouthful which it really benefits from. Without a bit of something to add texture it has the feel of eating a mouthful of butter. The crackers are also bite sized, so you don't have that thing there you bite into a cheese topped cracker only to have it snap in two, leaving you cheeseless and waist deep in crumbs. You have to be a bit careful not to get too much cheese as these crackers are very thin indeed.

It's on a cracker.

With toasted rye bread

At first the warm toast brought out more of the ammonia/urine smell, but that soon faded. After the first bite the mouldy flavour was most prominent. The buttery texture of the cheese was very nice with the crunchy toast and I thought it was better than the crackers. The thicker bread meant that the crunchy to creamy ratio was improved in my opinion.

I burned the toast a bit.

A few more comments

There didn't seem to be as much mould nearer the center of the piece, which was rather a shame as I found the mould flavour in this cheese to be particularly enjoyable and the cheese itself to be pretty much just Lurpak, which is owned by the same cooperative.

Conclusion

Deliciously mouldy butter. I would most definitely buy it again, especially if it's on offer again. I would pay full price too and I think I'll get another bit as soon as they get new stock on the shelves to see if the texture is any different. On the standard one to ten scale I'd give it a score of buttery cheese with a truly wonderful mould. One of the best moulds I've tasted.

Bunnahabhain 12 yo review still coming soon. Hoping I'll get it tomorrow.