Going Dutch. Going for Gold.

It is a strange thing this air we breathe and the soil under our feet. We do not, initially know what is in them; they are just firmly or transparently there.  Eventually we learn that the air contains nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, wind, perfumes redolent of the world, memories and complexities and that the soil is rich with the past, with hummus, stones, so many stones, clay, worms, mycelium, roots and lost treasures. 

What therefore one wonders, goes into our cheese?  We accept and hope that there are usually milks from cows, ewes and or does (female goats), seasons, grass, sunshine, midnight raids into neighbour’s garden plots, moulds, bacteria, linen wraps or wax seals, the differences of the processes of production. But beyond processes and terroir, there is still more. Like trees to Carbon Dioxide and into fresh air; there is a strong element of Dutch that goes into making that Irish farmhouse cheese. 

Go into a cheese shop to taste some of the locals and you would be hard pushed to avoid either a gouda or a Dutch hand, we even have a half-Dutch (at heart) cheese monger where I work. But let us be efficient, let us be appropriate to our topic, let us begin.

Marion Roeleved, cheese maker of Killeen Farmhouse, is a woman whom I admire as much as I enjoy. Last time I saw her she walked energetically and purposefully into the shop saying, “I have come to see my cheese.” Yes, we are taking good care of your children. 

Marion came to visit Ireland and met a goat farmer named Haske. Need we suggest more? Marion now makes a number of different cheese; she uses the milk from their own goat herd, from local cow herds and on behalf of a few milking sheep farmers. Her cheese are consistently good; they remind me of a well done cheese and ham sandwich – simple perhaps, but simply so satisfying. I also like that she branches out beyond the traditional wheels of gouda. I wonder if it is the affect of being in Ireland or an off-shoot of the adventurous spirit that moves to rural Ireland. Along with her multiple Gouda’s and some fresh cheese, Marion also makes a raw milk goat’s cheddar, Kilmora (‘Irish Emmental’ style) and Cais na Tire, a sheep milk cheese that reminds me of a delicate and textured young Manchego.

Onto the Willems family of Macroom Co. Cork... and that Ireland is a small country. In the 1990’s my brother’s (Dutch) French teacher drove around with wheels of his compatriot’s cheese in his boot, stopping between jobs to promote it to restaurants. The next generation of Dicky Willems has taken over but the tradition rocks on. The Willems left their nightclub business in Rotterdam to pursue idyll rural life in Ireland. A chance acquaintance with a dairy cow and vacuum of goudas available locally (Cork countryside in the1970’s), along with a Dutch attention to detail led to the development of Coolea. The Willems now concentrate on the cheese making and trust, with an attentive eye, their neighbours for the milk. This is what clearly happens when efficient adventurous people of a Dutch background look for a change in scenery.

Goudas I have known; if the people are not Dutch, their cheese style certainly is. Clonmore is a goat gouda made by Tom Beggane in Newtownshandrum, Co. Cork with milk from his herd of very privileged goats. Organic Mossfield Gouda comes from Irish, German descendent, Ralph Haslam of Co. Offaly at the grateful foot of the Slieve Bloom Mts.  Rose Van de Graaf and Roches Van de Vaart of the Oisin farmhouse in County Limerick (I am not sure where they are from, but I do wonder) import Dutch cheese (including some organic goat and blue goat gouda see On the Pig’s Back in Cork) and a few Ages Gouda Rounds for the laugh.

Ireland’s famous Cashel Blue owes a fair bit of its blue veined backbone to the labour of Geurt van denDikkenberg who took over for Jane Grubb in the early 1990’s as the master cheese maker when her own back began to tire.

No mention of the Dutch should go without homage to the makers of Mine-Gabhar and Mine-Croghan, goat cheeses (not Goudas) made by the Van Kampens, from Ballinadrishogue, Co. Wexford. Homage because it was an adventure of twenty plus years and a fantastic cheese It is sorely missed by those who have had it, missed like the Irish in America

who, every morning, must miss our salty rich butter and real unsweetened bread. In a land without much spare money, people still knew it was worth saving their pounds for a round of the perfection of mine-gabhar. Luc began it all as a hobby while pursuing being an artist and minding a woman’s goats; as you do. Their processes were scrupulous and the cheese gold. 
Doubt the writer? Homages here: 1 2 3 4

And so in Irish cheese we have a canal of Dutch history. Even the industrial Dubliner cheese (note it is not labeled cheddar) has a Gouda starter culture. Is it the Nederland’s people's hundreds of years of eating cheese?  The former mercantile empire continuing to spread their riches? The plain good practicality of these wax sealed curds? Or the fine attention to detail and simply good processes that Holland and the Dutch are replete with? …. Or is just the luck of the Irish?