Why the Dutch love their cheese
Internationally, the best known Dutch cheese is Gouda. But the Netherlands has a wealth of cheese varieties that are integral to the Dutch identity.
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00:00The Netherlands is known for its cheeses worldwide, especially this one in Dutch pronounced...
00:06Gouda?
00:07Not Gouda.
00:08It's a global hit.
00:09In the Netherlands you can find cheese anywhere and it's holy to the people.
00:15It's something you grew up with.
00:17Cheese means everything to us.
00:18I can't imagine a life without cheese.
00:21This makes me wonder, why is the Netherlands a cheese country?
00:24The Netherlands is a fairly small country with a population of just under 18 million
00:29people, but they produce a lot of cheese.
00:32The country is among the top 5 cheese producers in the EU.
00:35The Dutch are also the second biggest exporters of cheese worldwide, since they can't eat
00:40all the cheese themselves.
00:44To gain insights in the Dutch cheese making traditions, I'm in Alkmaar, popularly known
00:48as the cheese capital of the Netherlands.
00:51It has also one of the oldest cheese markets in the country and tourists like me can see
00:56how cheese was sold back in the days.
01:00The city of Alkmaar got its weighing rights in the year 1365, but what exact year the
01:05market actually started, no one knows.
01:08In the old times, the farmers would bring the cheese to the market for selling.
01:12After the quality of cheese was checked, traders would buy it from the farmers.
01:16Then the cheese carriers would help carry the cheese in pairs of two.
01:20Anyone who was not a part of the cheese carrier's guild could not carry it.
01:27I also got the chance to carry the barrow and trust me, it was not easy.
01:34That's because the cheese on these barrows can weigh more than 100 kilos.
01:38After the cheese is weighed and paid for, the barrow is stamped and the cheese taken
01:42away.
01:43You see, I'm from Pakistan and for me, growing up, cheese was not a very common food to find.
01:50But here in the Netherlands, you can find a variety of cheese and some of whose names
01:54I find it hard to pronounce, like...
01:56Alkmaar kaas.
01:57Alkmaar kaas.
01:58Graafstroom kaas.
01:59Belegen, which is another complicated story that I don't even know what it is.
02:05Some Dutch cheeses are also named after cities, such as Gouda, Edammer and Maastammer.
02:10Some because they were produced there, others because they were traded there.
02:15To find out which is the most popular type of Gouda cheese, I visited Robert Weerman,
02:19who has spent 25 years of his life in the cheese business.
02:23I think the middle alt.
02:25The middle alt is not too hard, not too soft and it is an excellent taste of cheese.
02:34But what are these age categories that the Dutch have when it comes to cheese?
02:38We have young, we have middle alt and we have, the young one is four weeks and we have an
02:44old one is three years.
02:47It's the same cheese, only three years older.
02:51From Robert, I learned that the younger cheeses are softer and milder in taste.
02:56The older the cheese, the more moisture it loses and the stronger its flavor becomes.
03:01While it takes me only a few minutes to eat all that cheese, it took the Dutch years to
03:08become pioneers in it.
03:13More than a quarter of the Netherlands is below sea level, during the Golden Age in
03:17the 16th and 17th century, when mills and canals were used to pump out water and dry
03:22the land.
03:25Annemie Geschaf, who works at the Alkmaar Cheese Museum, explains why this was good
03:28for cheese production.
03:30When they dry the polar landscape, there was a very fertile soil, remains, and that was
03:36a salty ground, salty ground and that gives the cheese a special taste that other countries
03:44don't have.
03:45But was there anything else that helped the Dutch to excel at cheese making other than
03:49salty grounds?
03:50The cows in the Netherlands gave more milk than the countries that surround them and
03:58around the 19th century, America took some Dutch cows to America and started cattle breeding
04:06because they wanted to have that much of delivery of milk also.
04:12That cow was named the Holstein Frisian and it still is our best milk cow.
04:20Another essential factor that contributed to the country's success in cheese making
04:24was experience.
04:26Already in 800 before Christ, we make cheese.
04:29In all these years, the development was enormous and that's why the Netherlands is one of the
04:35best cheese making countries of the world and we're proud of that.
04:40I hope you had fun joining me in this journey because now I gotta go and devour all this
04:46cheese that I got.