Scan Magazine | Culinary Feature | Wenersson Ost Danmark
The key to ageing tastefully Just like wine, people or a good steak, most cheeses need to undergo a carefully managed process of maturation before they reach their optimal state. Unbeknown to most, much of the cheese eaten in the Nordic countries is tenderly cared for and ripened at one huge 7,000-square-metre facility in Ulricehamn, Sweden, where the precision and exactness of modern science dovetail with the age-old cheesemastering traditions of the Wernersson and Tølløse families to create perfect examples of cheeses such as Jarlsberg, Kolibrie or Danablu.
maturation process is proceeding well and nothing unbecoming is happening. So the whole process depends on a careful balance of leaving the different cultures within the cheese to do their thing and monitoring them closely at the same time, helping them out with environmental adjustments along the way.”
By Louise Older Steffensen | Photos: Wernersson Denmark
Every year, young and immature wheels of cheese from 67 suppliers from across Scandinavia and Europe enrol at Ulricehamn. The cheeses are waxed and may be ennobled with a certain ingredient or flavour, such as Steffo’s alcohol-infused cheeses, which the Swedes have come to love. Depending on their disposition, the cheeses then spend anything between two weeks and two years reaching their full potential under Wernersson’s watchful eye. 36 | Issue 112 | May 2018
Ripe for the picking “There’s a certain amount of time that you might expect a particular kind of cheese to need to ripen for,” explains Jesper Jakobsen, general manager for Wernersson Denmark. “But it’s not as easy as leaving them for, say, six months exactly and then packing them up.” He reveals what sounds like an all-round top-notch job: “We have someone at the facility who has to constantly oversee and taste the cheese to make sure that the
Then, suddenly, the cheese reaches its optimal stage, where the flavour, smell, consistency and texture are perfectly aligned with the ideals of, say, a cheddar or a camembert. This might happen weeks or even months earlier or later than the previous batch of the same cheese. Once it is there, the cheese masters have to act quickly. “Unlike wine, which continues to improve for years in the bottle, cheese can only be kept at its optimum flavour and consistency for a set amount of time, so it is important to distribute it as soon as