Swiss Review 4/2019

Swiss Review / July 2019 / No.4 11 Culture MARC LETTAU First to themain issue at hand – how the Helvetic culinary heritage is doing.Well, Swiss cheese has never been better. The full liberalisation of the cheese trade between Switzerland and the EU in 2007 ultimately proved to be beneficial. Since then, Swiss cheese exports have been progressively increasing. Nowadays, this equates to well in excess of 70,000 tonnes a year. However, one particular cheese news itemthis spring had amuch stronger impact than all the export numbers: the news that Swiss cheese is musical. It even has sophisticatedmusical taste. It reacts dif- ferently toMozart’s “Magic Flute”, LedZeppelin’s “Stairway toHeaven”, Yello’s “Monolith” and the track “Jazz” from the hip-hoppers A Tribe Called Quest. We know this thanks to Beat Wampfler, the innovative Burgdorf cheesemonger, and Michael Harenberg, a music and media scientist at BernUniversity of the Arts (HKB). The odd couple actually wondered whether sound waves influence the metabolism of cheese to an extent that can be proved and also tasted. Wampfler and Haren- berg’s team then subjected nine wheels of cheese to music over a pe- riod of six months. A “reference cheese” aged in silence. At the beginning of the experiment, Wampfler hoped that the cheese exposed to hip-hopmusicwould ripen particularlywell: “That might lead young people to develop a taste for cheese”. His hopeswere realised when a specialist jury tasted his cheese. They gave the hip- hop cheese excellent marks. It differed the most from the reference cheese, impressed due to its “noticeable fruity aroma” and had the largest holes. When asked by “Swiss Review”, HKB spokespersonChristian Pauli said that the “sensational research” would now be continued. That leads us to ask howwe should actually view the cheese-sound exper- iment. Is it art, commerce or just a bit of fun? Pauli: “It’s actually some- where between art and commerce. It was never just about a bit of fun.” Pauli refers to the analysis of the ZurichUniversity of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) to refute any such allegations. This proves that exposure to sonic waves changed important flavour compounds in the cheese. Now it is a proven fact that the cheese sample exposed to deep fre- quencies ofmusic contained higher concentrations of the flavour com- pounds 2-Methylbutanal, 3-Methylbutanal, Methional, Phenylacet- aldehyde, 2-Ethyl-3,5-Dimethylpyrazine and propionic acid than the other samples. Inexperienced cheese consumers who have unwittingly assimi- lated all these flavour compounds will surely welcome the continua- tion of this research. Perhaps everyone will fall in love with cheeses that have their very own flavour. A small survey of the “Review” ed- itorial teamshows the breadth of musical requests: front-runners are “AtomHeartMother” (Pink Floyd), “CastaDiva” (Bellini), “Wewill rock you” (Queen), “Ha ke Ahnig” (Steff la Cheffe), themellifluous “Boleros Inolvidables” (Tito Rodríguez) and – most importantly – Katja Eb- stein’s “Wunder gibt es immer wieder” (“Miracles keep happening”). Musical Swiss cheese Ripening cheeses were exposed to music for months on end in the Emmental region. As a result of this experiment, we now know that cheese develops different flavours depending on the musical genre. And hip-hop makes for the biggest holes. Beat Wampfler is all ears when it comes to cheese. Here he is eavesdropping on a huge wheel of Emmental. Salter Markus Schneider looks on. Photo: Keystone