Reviews of Jarlsberg, Appenzeller White, and Asiago D'Allevo Cheese

 This month, I chose to go outside my usual selections for cheese and get some things outside my palate, just for variety.

To that end, I got three cheeses, all of wildly different flavor profiles, and below are my reviews of them all

Jarlsberg

Jarlsberg is Norwegian cheese, trademarked in 1972. It's a Swiss-type cheese made from cow's milk. Its origins date back to the 1850's. It has "gas holes", the traditional eyes of Swiss-type cheeses due to propionic bacteria, a harmless bacterium used to culture the cheese, and causes the eyes due to the buildup of CO2.

According to Murray's, it was sold as a mild, even mild fruity cheese, and in my and mother's taste testing, this is generally true, being very gentle and even slightly sweet for a Swiss-style cheese. It's a cheese I would easily recommend as a snack and cooking cheese, and I'm normally not a fan of Swiss cheese in general.

This, however, is something even I'm going to concede is pleasant to eat despite my own bias.

Appenzeller White

Now, this cheese is really out of my comfort zone. It's a somewhat stinky (albeit mildly) cheese made in an herbal brine made with raw cow's milk in Switzerland. It is the 'White" brand of Appenzeller, as it has many other sister brands named after colors.

Now, for a cheese with a stinky smell, this one is not overpowering. My mother, who has an aversion to Limburger, was able to eat this one without feeling overly ill, and even I could do so, so while it does have an unmistakable herbal odor, it's not overly cloying. The taste is definitely creamy milk mixed with a definite hint of spices and various herbs. If that sort of thing floats your boat, then this is a good cheese to enjoy, particularly as part of a meal to play off the flavor with complementary food items. It's edible on its own but not my choice as a snack cheese.

Asiago D'Allevo

This may be the first Italian cheese I did not overly enjoy. This is a hard cheese from the Veneto region of Italy. It's rather hard and I got cheese that was nearly a year old, more suitable for grating. As opposed to the milder Pecorino Romano and Grana Padano, both quite edible on their own even when aged, this is not the easiest to chew after it gets a certain age. It is less bland and certainly more piquant, someone wanting a grating cheese with more kick to it and less of a dry grainy or flaky and more fresh taste would enjoy it, but I found it wasn't to my palate.