Svedjan Ost – Some of the best cheeses in Sweden
The facade of the farmhouse dairy is a plastered white. The front door is deep red with a stainless steel plate displaying the company name. Pär and Johanna live in the nearby house. They would have it no other way. They also make some of the best cheeses in Sweden. All the awards that the couple and their cheeses have won, attest to that. Gold medal upon gold medal in the Swedish Championship. Silver and bronze. Farming entrepreneurs of the year. The People’s Choice Award. Words of praise from several other fashionable outlets.
However, more than anything, you realise upon meeting Pär and Johanna that cheese making is about love. Love of the place, of the process and of the product.
– You could say that we have condensed our lives – everything we know and stand for; the beautiful life at a farm in the northern forestland, into a cheese.
A JOURNEY OF INSPIRATION
– But we don’t make just one cheese, we make three, says Johanna, welcoming us inside the dairy. The Svejdan Gårdsost (Farm Cheese) is described as a hard cheese with small holes, inspired by Swedish cheesemaking traditions. The Svedjan Rustik (Rustic) is a blue cheese with a full, pleasant taste and soft texture, whilst the Smedjan Blå (Blue) is a rich blue cheese with a creamy texture.
The story of Svedjan Ost began in 2009. Back then, Pär and Johanna were involved in a different kind of farming. But the world around them changed so did the conditions for life on the farm.
– We were not really sure which way to go, says Johanna. We had briefly looked into cheesemaking, but it wasn’t more than that.
The couple still decided to go on a journey of inspiration together with Eldrimner — the national centre for artisan foods.
– And then, on a farm in southern France, the penny dropped. That’s exactly how we wanted to live. The French way of supporting their cheese tradition felt natural and was also directly transferable to our natural conditions up in the far north.
CHEMICAL PROCESSES
With the support of French master cheesemaker, Michel Lepage and Eldrimner, led by Bodil Cornell, Pär and Johanna began their journey towards becoming cheesemakers.
– We immediately decided that we wanted to make a long-term investment and grow slowly. At our own pace. Making cheese is actually quite complicated and a lot of it is about chemical processes, explains Pär. It took us about two years to fully understand how things are connected. What happens to the taste at various stages and how that affects the final product.
– The milk is of course highly important, Johanna continues. We use morning milk and 500 litres is made into three hard cheeses.
– And it’s all interconnected actually. The animals. The dairy. The care. The farm. The history. The buildings. The cultural landscape. All of this affects your experience of the flavour, which is why you couldn’t make Svedjan cheese anywhere but here.
CULTURAL EVENTS IN THE BARN
There is also a barn in the yard, Göte’s hay barn. There, Johanna and Pär have been organising cultural events every summer since the early 2010’s. Sometimes, there has been theatre, other times music.
– Every year we hold an art event called ‘KOnstHAGEN’ with an open house, an arts and crafts exhibition and of course Swedish fika.
ENJOY SVEDJAN CHEESE IN SKELLEFTEÅ
Svedjan Cheese is on the menus of several restaurants in Sweden. If you would like to buy some to take home with you, you can find Svedjan Cheese in several ICA supermarkets, at the Burträsk market hall, as well as at Nygatan 57’s Skafferi and Stadskällaren in central Skellefteå. The best place to get it, however, may well be the country store in Storkågeträsk, a stone’s throw from the farmhouse dairy.
Learn more about Svedjan ost: www.svedjanost.se
