Cheese review No.3 - Castello Black

Well, there are a whole bunch of whisky reviews on the way, but I want to finish the UDV classic malt series before I move on to another whisky and I still haven't got round to ordering the last two, which are Dalwhinnie and Oban. I'll stick a little list of reviews you can expect at the bottom of this post and hopefully you'll get all excited and keep reading my blog. I've had 1001 views as I'm typing this, so big thanks to everyone who's taken the time. Even bigger thanks to those who've taken the time more than once. In the mean time here's a cheese review. Spoiler alert: I liked it!

"Spoiler alert" feels far too modern a thing for me to be saying. I'm a hobbit at heart. I think it's genetic, my nephew looks like one. I met him again (I think for only the fourth time) at Christmas while visiting family. I also had some very pleasant evenings in the pub with my old friend Mr. Eaton, but sadly my old friend Mr. Tiffen was otherwise engaged and didn't make it back to Sheffield this year. Here's a picture of what my old friend Mr. Tiffen missed:

A nice British pint by a nice British fire.

 Ok, it's a gas fire, but it's still cozy. Six inches of snow that evening made it feel even more cozy in the pub. Hopefully he'll be enjoying the Laphroaig PX Cask I sent him. It's a good one, but only available in the duty free shops in airports. Look out for it if you travel, it's worth the money in my opinion. Or don't, it's your life. You can buy expensive face dust in the tax free for all I care, chances are I don't even know you. Better yet, pick up a bottle of this:

Hope it's worth the £20,000 price tag

I did ask for a taster but they said no. It was £20,000 making it the new most expensive bottle of whisky I've ever seen, the previous being a very dusty bottle with a hand written label I saw in a little shop in Edinburgh. That was £14,000 and personally I'd choose that one over this one, just for the look of it, Anyway, that's enough prattle, I'm sure my rambling introductions are getting longer and less relevant. Cheese time.

Bit of an intro

Castello black is another product from Castello, owned by Arla Foods. There's more detail on the company in my Castello Saga Classic review which you can read here. This particular cheese is not as available in the Norwegian supermarkets. Generally it's the places that cost more but have a better selection and better quality stuff that carry it. Again, it's not exactly an artisan cheese, but the Castello cheeses I've tried have all been pretty good and reasonably priced. Castello Black is no exception.

This cheese is made with pasturised milk from cows and sheep. 10% sheep milk apparently, and 87% cow's milk, which makes it 3% mould I suppose. On the Castello website it's described as a blue mould cheese, and although it certainly has something in common with Saga Classic flavour-wise, it's certainly not the same. I can't help thinking it would be fun to get a piece of each of Castello's mouldy cheeses to taste side by side for comparison. Maybe I'll do that with some friends one day, I think I'd get a bit over cheesey if I did that alone. They've given it a strength rating of 4 out of 5 on the website too. It's certainly got some powerful flavours.

They say the mould culture (which comes from southern Europe, unlike the milk which is Danish) forms a network throughout the cheese, and settles on the surface with a blue grey mould. Allowing mould to grow on the surface of a blue cheese is relatively unusual and it's much more common for the cheese to be washed and the mould removed. This mould can also appear very dark grey to black which I think it's safe to assume is why they decided to call it Black. I couldn't find exactly how long it's matured for, but they reckon it gets creamier in texture as it ages, and that the mould can sometimes turn reddish brown.

That's about all the information I could find about how it's made. They recommend it on it's own, or with bread or crackers. I paid 32.9 NOK for 150g, which is pretty much what you'd pay for any bit of cheese that size in a Norwegian supermarket. (That's £2.86, $4.35 US, 3.74 euros or 33.13 Guatemalan quetzals.)

Appearance

I personally quite like the look of it. Firstly the packaging is quite nice. You get a semicircle of cheese wrapped in special paper in a little cardboard container that stops it getting squashed. Very neat and easy to get into, unlike cheese vacuum sealed in plastic. Also easy to re-wrap if you manage to restrain yourself from eating it all in one go, which I didn't the first time I tried it.

Nice cheese wrapping, Castello

The cheese itself looks deliciously mouldy, although I could understand the appearance putting someone off if they weren't used to mouldy cheese. The colour of the mould ranges from white, through bluish grey with a couple of greenish spots and there are some spots that really are black. The mould covers the outside and there are lumps of it inside as well.

Deliciously rotten lump of milk

The inside (the paste) is pale, creamy yellow with lumps of mould, and you can see that the texture is quite varied.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

If you click the picture for a closer look you can see that there is a patch of softer looking stuff to the left side and firmer cheese around the mould.

Body

The body if this cheese is closer to a brie than something like Stilton, but it's quite varied throughout. There are firmer parts around the lumps of mould, but also some really soft and sticky parts in between, but not so soft that it doesn't hold its shape, and it doesn't ooze like very ripe brie does. You can see it on the picture above. The firmer parts crack as you pull it apart, but it's certainly not crumbly. The softer parts feel buttery if you rub it between your fingers.

Aroma

Musty, damp cellar smell, kind of ammonia like smell on the outside that quite frankly is a bit like urine. Sweet smell from the paste. They call it floral and I can kind of see what they mean, but it wouldn't be the word I'd use. I'm not sure what word I would use though. There's also a faint, freshness to the smell from the paste which I suspect comes from the sheep milk.

Texture

The texture is varied as I've said. Buttery, slightly chewy lumps of mould and the occasional gritty bit, which I assume is something like calcium lactate. It's generally soft and sticky in the mouth, but not cloying. A thin cracker with not much flavour (like the spelt cracker you'll see in the picture I'm going to put up in a minute) really adds to the experience with a bit of crunch. The rind is sturdier which is to be expected because it's drier. Probably the most interesting textured cheese I've ever tasted.

Flavour

There's a faint milky freshness, and a sourish, salty tang at first, then aromatic mustiness, followed by a sweetness and a kind of woody taste as the flavour fills out enormously. A bit of a rotting leaf, forresty taste. There's almost a burning sensation in places, but it's not so strong as to be unpleasant. The musty, mouldy, woody flavours linger pleasantly  for quite a while, causing an intense desire for more cheese and possibly leading to addiction. The flavour is generally quite strong and with the combination of sweet, sour, salt, aromatic mustiness and savoury cheesiness you get a very full, complex and interesting flavour. My notes say "a long deep after taste with whiffs of piss." How uncouth I am.

A few extra comments

The first thing I'd like to add is that thin crackers really add to the experience. I've been using Sætre's Beste Tynne Speltkjeks. They're made from spelt flour and have very little flavour and so don't distract from all the fascinating cheese flavours, but make the texture more interesting. Not that the texture wasn't interesting to begin with.

I'd really recommend trying this combination:

Yes please!

It's a thin spelt cracker, a bit of Castello Black and a walnut topped off with a drop of runny acacia honey. Shove it all in your mouth and chew it slowly. Savour the flavour. The honey and walnut flavours work very well with the cheese, especially the walnut. It adds even more to the texture experience and the slight bitterness rounds out the flavour even more. I worked my way through a whole piece of cheese using this method, while watching the second Hobbit movie with some friends. My foreign fire fighting friend Mr. Nøkland was quite repulsed and refused to try it. In fact he would have preferred not to be in the same room as the cheese, which shows once again that taste is a very subjective experience.

Conclusion

This is one of the most enjoyable cheeses I have ever had. The full complex flavour is incredibly satisfying and the long aftertaste mean you can savour this cheese and make it last. It's therefore quite cost effective, until you start adding crackers, walnuts and posh honey. Would I buy it again? I already have, several times. In fact right now I'm exploring my fifth or sixth piece. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes blue cheese, although if you don't like blue cheeses I'd stay well clear. This is a powerful cheese, and on the standard one to ten scale I'd give it a score of one of the most delicious rotten secretions ever to come from an udder.

Coming soon...

Well, coming eventually. I've still got ideas about beer reviews, and I went to a Christmas beer tasting not long ago, so I have notes on ten Norwegian Christmas brews to share. Hopefully next up will be the last two of the classic malts (I ordered them just ten minutes ago), and I have a bottle of Longrow and one of Aberlour A'bunadh in the cupboard that I still haven't opened. I tasted Glen Morray and Jack Daniels single barrel with my old friend Mr. Eaton while i was back in the UK, so I'll do brief reviews of those. Then I'll get onto my Christmas presents. I got a Glenlivet selection pack with miniatures of 12, 15 and 18 year olds. Also a selection of Glenfiddich miniatures with 12 year old, 14 year old rich oak and 15 year old Solera Vat. Then some Old Malt Cask samples, Old Malt Cask being produced by Hunter Laing and Co Ltd, an independent bottler. I've got a small bottle of Ledaig 9 yo from them, and miniatures of 26 yo Caol Ila and 19 yo Port Ellen. There's a mysterious miniature that's a birthday present from my sister too, so I'll be opening that on Friday, and a bottle of Sainsbury's blended scotch which I'm thinking might be the start of a series on blended whisky.

Feel free to comment, and remember to tell all your friends how exciting it is to read my blog.