Age of Brie-lliance: From Bandel To Brunost, How Indian Cheese Came Of Age

When Mausam Narang made her foray into the then uncertain world of Indian artisanal cheeses with her Norwegian-style whey cheese named Brunost in 2018, she could not have imagined that eight years later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be presenting three cheeses from her Bhandup (Mumbai)-based creamery, Eleftheria, to the visiting President of Switzerland, Guy Parmelin.

The gift carried a subtle message from PM Modi about the depth and diversity of Made in India brands. The distinguished visitor, after all, leads the country that is famous for Emmental, the cheese with holes immortalised by Tom & Jerry cartoons. But Indian artisanal cheese, championed by PM Modi, is definitely not a pushover.

ALSO READ | 3 Award-Winning Indian Cheeses That PM Modi Gifted To Swiss President

It seemed like a complete role reversal from the time, recreated in the Jim Sarbh-headlined OTT series, Made in India: A Titan Storywhen a Swiss luxury watchmaker laughed out JRD Tata’s idea of making an Indian quartz watch with Swiss expertise. Like Tata’s Titan, India’s artisanal cheeses are finding eager markets and winning international awards.

For Gaurava Vatsa, a former Amul executive who’s now running his own gourmet foods business, Food Smith, there’s a delicious irony in the President of the nation synonymous with Emmental getting Indian artisanal cheeses as gifts from the Prime Minister.

Vatsa remembers the time when Amul started producing an Emmental-style cheese in 2002. The product bombed because people couldn’t accept a cheese with holes. The cheese is spoilt, they would complain. But when Vatsa returned with an Emmental from a Danish mega company, the naysayers accepted it at once and a stockist at Delhi’s INA market was selling it at more than twice the Amul price. That is no longer the case. “The demand for European-style cheeses made in India is now at an all-time high,” Vatsa says. “And surprisingly, expats living here are most interesting in trying them out.”

India, of course, is no stranger to artisanal cheese. From the OG, Bandel, whose history dates back to the late 16th century, when it was first produced by a Portuguese community that had settled down in the neighbourhood of present-day Kolkata, to Kalimpong cheese, which owes its existence to the efforts of the Jesuit Father Andre Butty in the 1800s, and of Jammu’s Kalari, the base of the slurpilicious street delicacy kalari kulcha, or the Himalayan yak milk-based Chhurpi, also championed by PM Modi.

Pan forward to the 1980s and 1990s, and you find the emergence of the pioneers. We have the man who directed the Bollywood blockbuster Qayamat Se Qayamat TakAamir Khan’s cousin Mansoor Khan, retiring to Coonoor and launching Acres Wild – named after a Jethro Tull Song – where he makes European-style cheeses and offers homestays.

Across the country, at Bijwasan, Delhi, Sunil Bhu, much against the wishes of his father, an airline pilot, became a dairy farmer and cheese maker trained in Belgium (hence the name of his brand, Flanders). Today, Bhu produces more than a ton of cheese daily, including his much-applauded buffalo milk mozzarella and everyone’s favourite Burrata.

Representational Image: Unsplash

And for the past 24 years, Benny Ernst, an Asterix lookalike, has been making European-style cheeses in Auroville, Pondicherry. To quote the words of Narang from an earlier email interaction with this writer, these were (and are) “world-class cheeses, using locally sourced milk, inspired by global craftsmanship but rooted in Indian craftsmanship.”

ALSO READ | This Himachal Woman Started With 20 Litres Of Milk, Now Runs A Rs 70 Lakh Business

The ground laid out by these pioneers appears well-trodden today. When LOTS, the Thai cash-and-carry operator, opened its Indian business, its catalogue included 28 different brands of artisanal cheese brands, from Kase in Chennai to Dry Jack coming out of Dibrugarh, Assam. Unsurprisingly, according to the Pune-based Team Dairy Experts, India today produces up to 70,000 metric tons (MT) of cheese (both processed and increasingly artisanal), seven times higher than the 10,000 MT recorded in 2010.

And the list of Indian artisanal cheeses continues to grow. Ask Dhruv Oberoi, Executive Chef, Olive Bar & Kitchen, and he’ll mention Zarai, a Gruyere-style cheese pepped up with local spices, from Darima Farm in Uttarakhand, which goes into the restaurant’s signature souffle. The Kalimpong cheese in his kitchen, which is now made by just one family in that Himalayan town in West Bengal, is used to make the French buns named gourgere. His supply of Kalari, which comes from Himalayan Cheese in Jammu, goes into making a flatbread as well as an escabeche with pan-smoked tomatoes. And the smoked Bandel cheese is the base for the classical Tomato Sorrentino Pasta, where it has replaced the old Italian favourite, Scarmoza.

So, what are the factors that have driven this remarkable growth? Most of the new generation of artisanal cheeses, which took off on the wings of the market of new and curious consumers spawned by Covid lockdowns, have been driven by three factors, according to Prateeksh Mehra, co-founder of Spotted Cow, one of the more successful brands created in the last 15 years. These are

• The evolved plate of the new generation of world-travelled consumers.

• Unhappiness of chefs, especially of five-star hotels, with mass-produced international brands, many of which would arrive well past the ‘sell by’ day.

• Restrictions imposed by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), especially on imported cheese.

There was clearly a demand-supply gap that the new cheesemakers filled up with efficiency and world-class quality. And on their back rides the phenomenal success of artisanal cheese brands. India, clearly, has stepped into its own Age of Brie-llience.

Sourish Bhattacharyya is a noted New Delhi-based food columnist, author and blogger, and a print journalist with more than three decades of experience.