Fairfax is reporting a kerfuffle among the luvvies:
AUSTRALIA’S artisan cheese and dairy producers are up in arms after a global supermarket chain wiped the floor with them at the annual Sydney Royal dairy awards.
Aldi, based in Germany but with stores across Europe, the United States, Britain and Australia, picked up 49 medals, including eight gold, and was named the most successful dairy produce exhibitor at the Royal Agricultural Society of NSW 2013 Cheese and Dairy Produce Show awards.
Okay – so they’re sore losers. But what is the complaint?
Pepe Saya, who supplies butter to Neil Perry’s Rockpool, Aria restaurant and Qantas first class, said while he fully supported the work of the Agricultural Society to grow the dairy industry, he personally stopped entering the awards after Coles started entering its generic brands.
”I don’t believe that a non-manufacturer or a non-producer should be allowed to leverage off the Sydney Royal brand,” he said. ”Here’s a brand that’s been given to the philistines like Aldi, Coles and Woolworths. [But] what does it mean to have a gold any more? This is the disappointment. This is the heartache.”
They don’t want to compete against philistines – but it gets worse.
”The awards have become a parody of themselves if what they’re taking is big, industrial products and putting them in the same category as hand-made, artisan products,” [Michael McNamara, cheesemaker at Pecora Dairy] said.
Must be terrible when the judges (who presumbably were chosen for their cheese tasting skills) choose the industrial mass produced (and no doubt much cheaper) cheeses over the clearly inferior yet more expensive hand crafted stuff.
Sounds like the Royal Agricultural Society will have to have a handicap competition for those who try hard and mean well but just are not good enough.
(HT: johanna)
Blessed are the cheesemakers ……
Leigh Lowe
19 Feb 13 at 9:49 am
How do these poseurs get away with calling their cheese, (or beer, or wine, or olive oil), “hand made”?
It’s just made in smaller vats than Coles and Aldi.
Bill
19 Feb 13 at 9:50 am
Eat Aldi cheese?
Not Moi..
cynical1
19 Feb 13 at 9:50 am
The cheesemaking left wants an official handicapper to slow the better Aldi horse down, it seems.
Alfonso
19 Feb 13 at 9:54 am
John Cleese loves Aldi cheese
JamesK
19 Feb 13 at 9:58 am
Perhaps it would help if the cheeses to be judged were labelled.It’s the same with bloody blind wine tasting,the “wrong” people so often win.
Lew
19 Feb 13 at 10:04 am
Thanks, Sinc (blush).
We see articles and TV promos for these ‘artisan cheesemakers’ all the time. There they are, working like C19th French peasants to produce piddling amounts of expensive dairy products.
For some reason, they think this makes them worthier than those who produce high quality products at an affordable price for the masses.
Grange is a nice prestige line for Penfolds. But, it is their excellent quality, mass-produced, affordable wines that render the greatest service to consumers, the company and the industry alike.
‘Artisan’ food and drink is a nice hobby for some. But as history has shown us, it is also a recipe for mass malnutrition/starvation when substituted for modern methods. But hey, it’s natural, right?
johanna
19 Feb 13 at 10:07 am
Wait, let me get this straight, they lost to manufactured cheeses and now they are complaining and saying “yeah well we handmake our cheeses!”? Umm, who cares how your cheese is made mate? If it’s cheaper and tastes better, who honestly cares?
MattR
19 Feb 13 at 10:17 am
Judged and rewarded on the quantity and quality of their inputs rather than their outputs – isn’t that the whole premise of the organic/artisan/health food industry? Surely the RAS could come up with a suitable gong? PS. I like Aldi cheese too!
Andrew
19 Feb 13 at 10:17 am
It all has the whiff of corruption about it. How could a crap outfit like Aldi possibly have cheese produced for it that competes with artisan-made product. If I was a specialised cheese-maker I’d boycott these contests.
Capitalism is ruining all of our artistic endeavours in this country. We’re losing our culture. And for what? Money, money, money.
hammygar
19 Feb 13 at 10:23 am
Excellent cheese pun Hammy!
Although, on reflection, I suspect it was totally accidental due to the fact that you are a humourless twat.
Leigh Lowe
19 Feb 13 at 10:32 am
Highly recommend Aldi soft blue. Evidently, there are other soft cheeses are good too.
Judith Sloan
19 Feb 13 at 10:36 am
Sounds like Julair Gillard and the Labor Party “Buy Australian” Philistines
PM finds Scots hide to dye for
BY:BEN PACKHAM From: The Australian February 19, 2013 12:00AM
JULIA Gillard’s office furniture will be re-upholstered in plush Scottish leather after the hides of Australian-grown beasts failed to meet strict quality standards.
A West Melbourne company proudly announced the delivery of the custom hides yesterday as the Prime Minister pitched her new Australian jobs plan in Brisbane.
The $1 billion jobs plan will require companies to ensure local manufacturers get a chance to tender for big mining and construction projects.
H Leffler & Son chief executive Paul Guyett said there was no question of using Australian hides to re-cover the Prime Minister’s furniture.
OldOzzie
19 Feb 13 at 10:38 am
Why not let the artisan products get a bit of showing with separate categories. And cheesemaking is probably a kind of lost art, why not showcase it.
It’s no threat to the big producers, we need cheap cheese.
candy
19 Feb 13 at 10:40 am
Indeed. Similarly, how could a crap outfit like LVMH Moët Hennessy • Louis Vuitton possibly have champagne, cognac, luxury luggage or perfumes produced for it that compete with artisan-made products?
I, for one, don’t doubt that.
Yep, some of the worst art in history was produced when rich people, say, such as Italian merchants, commissioned sell-outs such as Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo to produce their muck. The illegitimate descendants of Lorenzo the Magnificent were particularly smug when they commissioned art: they were patronising bastards.
Deadman
19 Feb 13 at 10:44 am
candy, in what way is cheesemaking a lost art? More and better cheese is being made today than ever before.
And why should making things using primitive and uneconomic methods get a special category of gold medals? If they get any medals, they should be hand-woven out of raffia.
johanna
19 Feb 13 at 10:51 am
Or maybe they just made better cheeses. Didn’t even consider that did you?
In fact, I have had several of Aldi’s cheeses and they are all excellent.
You leftists really are a bunch of snobby toolbags you know that? If you hate capitalism so much, there are plenty of non-capitalist countries that will take you. I hear Venezuela is great this time of year.
MattR
19 Feb 13 at 10:51 am
Well said Johanna, couldn’t have put it better myself. There something funny about arty wankers being beaten by so-called philistines. I do like supporting mum and dad type small businesses though, especially when it comes to wine. I wouldn’t do it if the quality of the product was inferior, but fortunately some of the best wine in Margaret River and Denmark (South coast of WA) comes from those smaller vineyards. The big guys make great stuff too of course (Howard Park, Leeuwin, Cullen etc).
tbh
19 Feb 13 at 10:52 am
What is the point. Consumer consume. Individual consumers choose to consume what suits their unique cares. We don’t need to judge other peoples choices or knowledge systems. Isn’t the legitimate concern why our choices are being systematical constrained in the interest of self interest.
Andrew Scobie
19 Feb 13 at 10:54 am
“The illegitimate descendants of Lorenzo the Magnificent were particularly smug when they commissioned art: they were patronising bastards.”
Jarrah
19 Feb 13 at 10:55 am
Believe it or not, I make my own beer. As a proud, hand-crafted beer maker, I can tell you it is bloody hard to make a good product. Sure, it’s easy making beer superior to Carlton Cold or West End, but mass produced quality European beers? Not often.
With their superior beers, it is only a matter of scaling up production without cutting corners in ingredients or production techniques. FFS, a bigger fermenter does the trick!
Why would anyone be surprised that a German supermarket chain could produce or acquire quality cheese?
Europeans know how to make cheese. Suck it up, princesses!!!
The Beer Whisperer
19 Feb 13 at 10:58 am
Yes – as good as the castello blue.
Sinclair Davidson
19 Feb 13 at 10:58 am
Moldy blue cheese – ugh!
candy
19 Feb 13 at 11:02 am
If we all gave up Dairy the world would be better off!!! Is one cheese better than another? No… they are all terrible.
Justin
19 Feb 13 at 11:02 am
I notice that producers of fine single malt whisky here in Tas. don’t complain about competing against larger corporations’ products; they just produce really good whisky.
See, for example:
http://www.larkdistillery.com.au/
http://nantdistillery.com.au/
http://www.tasmaniadistillery.com/
Deadman
19 Feb 13 at 11:05 am
The premium olive oils from Coles and Woolies are very good too. A lot or most of the stuff the Europeans send us is second grade rancid garbage. Australian olive oils that you find on the supermarket shelves are in general good, but it’s remarkable that the house brands (in the premium range) are of such high quality.
Dangph
19 Feb 13 at 11:08 am
Hahahahahaha!!! Kero Boy defends the elitist price-gouging protectionists and attacks the “crap outfit” that cuts supermarket food prices by 30-70%. What else have you got that punishes the poor? Oh yeah, the electricity tax and $260 billion in government borrowings, driving the AUD through the roof and destroying manufacturing. Marxism’s finest hour.
Tom
19 Feb 13 at 11:10 am
The Royal Agricultural Show Awards – how Royally frustrating for the artisinal, unpredictable quality, low volume, appropriately priced produce, producers.
Effing snobs, the lot of them.
I think there might be an Aldi in Perth, but I shop at woolies for the fuel discounts apart from the convenience of locality.
Louis Hissink
19 Feb 13 at 11:19 am
How do these poseurs get away with calling their cheese, (or beer, or wine, or olive oil), “hand made”?
It’s just made in smaller vats than Coles and Aldi.
Quite so Bill.
I wonder also at the description “hand made” when applied to beer.
What, do they lovingly knead the yeast and malt into the water before shaping it into convenient bottle sized portions?
The craft and artisan cheesemakers are just as addicted to slogan and publicity gimmicks as the big chains.
TimT
19 Feb 13 at 11:25 am
We now know that Coles brand cheese is made by Jindi because both brands were recently recalled at the same time.
Would it be acceptable for Jindi to enter a cheese contest? If not, why not?
Chistery
19 Feb 13 at 11:26 am
How could a crap outfit like Aldi possibly have cheese produced for it that competes with artisan-made product. If I was a specialised cheese-maker I’d boycott these contests.
I love hearing this stuff from stupid fucks like Hammy. I’ll let you in on a little secret. ‘Average’ people have made their own cheese, spiced meats and preserved fruits for ages (not to mention honey, liquors, beers, smoked meats and fish, even tobaccos). Generally these used to be the type of people the latte-left would look down upon i.e. poor people. Then two things happened:
1. Capitalism made quality food so cheap poor people stopped having to do it and everyone’s ability to eat well was only dependent on their desire for good food, not their financial situation;
2. Some bright capitalists realised you could produce stuff like cheese but sell it with extreme markup as a gourmet product to dumb fucks like you out of a country ‘wine bar’.
So you keep paying lots for your ‘premium’ product. I’ll keep trying new European stuff from Aldi and have a better experience than you for a lower price. It’s natural justice at its best.
John Mc
19 Feb 13 at 11:28 am
Is it a surprise really? Like the Beer Whisperer said, all Coles and Aldi and Woolies have to do is scale up production using bigger vats. Plus they have much more financial resources than the artisan cheesemakers. Plus Aldi, through its European origins, has a direct connection to some of the oldest cheesemaking cultures in the world.
TimT
19 Feb 13 at 11:31 am
Does Sinclair’s defence of the foodally non-fancy mean that he’ll now give Nescafe the respect it deserves?
C.L.
19 Feb 13 at 11:31 am
White Costello with sweet biscuits and a glass of champagne or semillion – yum!
Helen Armstrong
19 Feb 13 at 11:36 am
Don’t mind me, I’m off to Aldi for some cheese.
I remember one day I was shopping in the markets in London where Jamie Oliver is always being photographed – I forget the name now,but they are under the railway lines for Waterloo station. And I’m cooking up a dinner for some friends, some decide to buy an organic free range chicken like organistas are always harping on about. After paying something like 10 quid for a chook, I take it home and cook it up.
Well, this crappy chicken had hardly any flesh on its bones, and was rather tough and stringy. So I paid more for a clearly inferior product, and the only available consumer surplus was the abiltity to name drop the place of purchase. It’s lucky I could ply the guests with cheap Australian wine to whitewash the poor eating.
I’ve never made that mistake again. Supermarket chickens for me ever since. Like local arts and crafts, all local food should be viewed with suspicion until proven otherwise.
brc
19 Feb 13 at 11:38 am
Can’t speak for the other two, but you reckon Nant produce really good whisky you have rocks in your head. subtle as a meat axe to the head.
mct
19 Feb 13 at 11:39 am
CL – Nescafe is not food. Just like cold tea isn’t food either.
Sinclair Davidson
19 Feb 13 at 11:39 am
I love it. The Prick with a Fork attacks both sides:
When a representative of the Australian Specialist Cheesemakers’ Association complains about the show ”taking … big, industrial products and putting them in the same category as hand-made, artisan products” and then going on to win, it sounds like the same sort of sour grapes French winemakers indulged in after they got the culottes beat off them by the Californians in the famous 1976 Judgement of Paris.
…. have a look at some of the categories and awards. “Shredded or grated cheese. Retail or Food Service Pack. Exhibitor to specify cheese type on the Application for Entry” is one. “Cheddar Cheese, matured, Retail pack, Minimum Exhibit of 1kg” is another. As a Facebook commenter was seen to note, “There’s a category you can win with class. To be eligible your entry must be in a bag and weigh more than a large cat.”
Small cheesemakers should not complain about the ruling body. They should become the ruling body, go on the attack, and state the obvious, which is that any judge who thinks Bega makes the best cheddar cheese in Australia has his tastebuds in his ass…
TimT
19 Feb 13 at 11:39 am
No Aldi in WA, but Nescafe is a necessity!
Louis Hissink
19 Feb 13 at 11:41 am
brc, Inglewood Farms produces an awesome organic free range chicken, available at your local supermarket.
Dangph
19 Feb 13 at 11:49 am
Aldi owns Trader Joe’s (a cheaper alternative to Whole Foods) in the US. All the hipsters line up to shop there.
The quality is fantastic. I hope Aldi brings Trader Joe’s to Australia
vr
19 Feb 13 at 11:52 am
mct:
One in particular, or all three? The one which is 63% alcohol has, I concede, some strength.
Deadman
19 Feb 13 at 11:54 am
So create a Luddite Award, as well as a trophy that get a nice pointy hat to wear as well.
Harold
19 Feb 13 at 11:54 am
Aldis is great.
Paul
19 Feb 13 at 11:56 am
Given 94% of Aldi’s dairy is Australian grown (for want of a better term) you could safely assume that many of their soft cheeses are in fact made in Aus, probably by National Foods (Lion) or Bega or similar. Given I haven’t bought any I can’t say for sure, but my missus used to work for Lion in Dairy and they make plenty of other plain label stuff for the supermarkets.
Old Fridgie
19 Feb 13 at 11:57 am
Nothing wrong with Aldi cheeses. It’s all gouda and I could edam all.
Gab
19 Feb 13 at 11:59 am
And the best food spray ever….
“Hunter Valley winemaker Bruce Tyrell, who supplies Tesco, said: “He’s a wanker — he should go back to selling dog food. For years, the Australian wine industry has been supplying the British with technically correct wines that have good colour and are full of flavour, compared with the Europeans, who have been supplying them with technically poor wines with no colour and taste like cat’s piss.”
Alfonso
19 Feb 13 at 12:00 pm
Hammygar, your attempts at humour have worn very thin. Give it a rest.
Dan
19 Feb 13 at 12:03 pm
Prick with a Fork is a snob. People with a life (jobs, kids, interests etc) buy things like the pre-grated cheese to make pizza at home for a quick snack or evening meal. What’s more, they buy it by the shedload. So what? Should they be buying “boutique” mozzarella at six times the price and grating it themselves to make some wanker foodie happy?
That being the case, I can’t see the problem with giving consumers a heads-up about which product tastes best.
I must also confess that a lot of my dislike of these so-called ‘artisans’ comes from the fact that almost invariably, they are on the full-tilt-boogie “organic, biodynamic, food miles, environmentally-friendly’ bandwagon to justify their exhorbitant prices and make themselves feel good. Yes, Maggie Beer, I’m looking at you.
johanna
19 Feb 13 at 12:05 pm
Definitely file that one under ‘no shit sherlock’
brc
19 Feb 13 at 12:05 pm
Aldi also source their fruit and veg and meat locally. Not bad for a wicked multinational.
Porterhouse and salmon perfectly acceptable.
Judith Sloan
19 Feb 13 at 12:06 pm
“Hunter Valley winemaker Bruce Tyrell, who supplies Tesco, said: “He’s a wanker — he should go back to selling dog food. For years, the Australian wine industry has been supplying the British with technically correct wines that have good colour and are full of flavour, compared with the Europeans, who have been supplying them with technically poor wines with no colour and taste like cat’s piss.”
This would seem to be true. I once bought a bottle of French brandy from Aldi – it was undrinkable even as a mixer. They’d be better looking to Australian suppliers.
Anthony
19 Feb 13 at 12:09 pm
Judith – try their chicken too. Excellent. Their corned beef is the only one we buy these days.
Sinclair Davidson
19 Feb 13 at 12:16 pm
The Aldi Beef Eye fillet is superb.
Sirocco
19 Feb 13 at 12:19 pm
I like Coon Tasty and it’s great they haven’t been forced to change their name.
candy
19 Feb 13 at 12:27 pm
Anyone who has bought cheeses in Europe knows we are ripped off here: grossly overpriced, not much variety and nothing remarkable in the way of flavour. I was in Sainsburys a few months ago. The choice and prices were astonishing — in a good way.
A tip: Aldi’s Saint Etienne beer is tops. Made in France, it’s a Stella Artois knock-off. And half the price of imported beers in Dan Murphy.
Walter Plinge
19 Feb 13 at 12:36 pm
It’s time to introduce an Encouragement Award or a Participant’s Ribbon.
Every child wins an award – isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be?
ev425128
19 Feb 13 at 12:39 pm
full-tilt-boogie “organic, biodynamic, food miles, environmentally-friendly’ bandwagon
Love it joanna. Don’t they just? I retreated in full steam from a wedding registry the other day when I saw the fine print said something like ‘some profits go to something sustainable and eco friendly’ can’t remember what, but if I want to subsidise green, I will do it directly, and not through raised prices in a registry. I went else where.
But back to the cheese. It would seem that there need to be more classes added, like artisan cheese or handmade cheese, then a grand champion cheese winner, which can be anyone, artisan or Aldi .
Helen Armstrong
19 Feb 13 at 12:54 pm
I see Hammy still has his tongue firmly in his cheek. Provocateur par excellence. I loves the guy.
After shopping at Woollies (Select Brands are really good) my beloved and I sit and have an expensive Cappuccino ( at her insistence). I just can’t wait to get home and have a black Nescafe.
Louis, Are you the guy who removes the Bean tokens off the Nescafe jars and puts them back on the shelf?
face ache
19 Feb 13 at 12:59 pm
And if I bought any other brand of coffee for my home group AA meeting I would be in big trouble.
face ache
19 Feb 13 at 1:01 pm
“How could a crap outfit like Aldi possibly have cheese produced for it that competes with artisan-made product.”
What prevents Aldi from making good cheese? They can afford all the expensive equipment, poach excellent cheese makers and source the best ingredients. Just because its made on a large scale doesn’t mean its crap hammy.
Besides, some artesian cheeses are f***** awful…
“Capitalism is ruining all of our artistic endeavours in this country.”
Cheese is NOT art hammy
ugh
19 Feb 13 at 1:01 pm
And leftist art isn’t art either Hamster
JamesK
19 Feb 13 at 1:03 pm
My wife is Swiss and pretty much inhales cheese to stay alive. I would summarise her opinions on the Australian cheese situation as follows:
1. Imported cheese is obscenely expensive (but personally I get more credits for a sliver of Gruyere than a bunch of flowers).
2. While not a big fan of cheddar in general, she and her family consider a couple of the national varieties to be very good, and they even go in the Christmas hamper back to the mother land (along with Vegemite I’m pleased to say). Hand crafted cheddar is left well alone.
3. The quality of Australian hand crafted cheese is generally disappointing, with a few exceptions which are almost always goats’ cheese.
4. Our 4 year old son has been eating Viking Blue on his toast for brekkie since he was 6 months old. Damn that boy eats well. He gets the Viking because my wife won’t touch it. He doesn’t get the Papillon.
Uber
19 Feb 13 at 1:03 pm
Well if you can’t have real coffee then I suppose Nescafe tastes better than any other brand of imitation coffee.
Gab
19 Feb 13 at 1:07 pm
The poor ol’ Philistines really have had a bad press. Was that big guys name really Goliath Abbot. Of course David was a Jew so you would expect Goliath to be hailed as good guy by now.
face ache
19 Feb 13 at 1:13 pm
Nescafe is the nicest coffee Gab, got 43 beans in every cup too …
candy
19 Feb 13 at 1:19 pm
Prick with a Fork is a snob
Mebbe so Johanna (it’s kind of inherent in his blog name after all) but I think he makes a good point there. Awards for stuff like ‘grated cheese in a bag’ do seem to indicate that the competition was set up and had its categories defined in a very different era in Australia, when ‘exotic’ cheese meant stuff like Kraft Singles. It’s undoubtedly true that the cheeses the big chains will favour will usually be lacking in flavour and strength, to cause as little offense as possible to those they market too.
Anyway, I like his ‘you’re all wrong’ contrarian approach. Check out this one, in which he defends another big chain against the snobbery of French cheesemakers.
TimT
19 Feb 13 at 1:23 pm
There’s an article in Th’age that summarizes the concerns of the boutique petty-bourgeoisie quite well, the aesthetic objection is as follows:
To the best of knowledge the analogy doesn’t hunt. That doesn’t mean much ’cause I’m not a big cheese eater and know almost nothing about making the stuff. But a hi-res photo, or any photo, wouldn’t make it into the Archibald because that’s a prize for painters. It’s a different product tho’ it does the same thing. Aldi cheese is still cheese; it’s not yoghurt or butter.
There’s Brie and Camembert there for $3. It’s not spectacular but it’s as good as the stuff at Coles that’s twice as much. I sympathize with the author of that piece viz diminishing choice but perhaps he’d better pay attention to factors that diminish entry to trade rather than bemoan the demise of the Holy Goat of the Moon cheese.
Adrien
19 Feb 13 at 1:28 pm
Why, then, should Aldi’s Westacre Manhattan apricot and almond cream cheese be equally as worthy of a silver medal as the fantastically delicious, farm produced, handmade, biodynamic Holy Goat La Luna ring, regarded by many as Australia’s premier cheese?
Just when you’re almost won over to the artisan cheese cause the poseurs at the Fairfax papers remind you why you’d never want to side with the snobs.
TimT
19 Feb 13 at 1:32 pm
You’ve been brainwashed by advertising, Candy
Gab
19 Feb 13 at 1:34 pm
I’m a cheese connossieur, and married to a cheese eating surrender monkey who used to make cheese and has a degree in food science, so I do know a little about what I speak here.
The so-called artisanal cheese makers are pissed off, I get that, mainly, it’s because they make the cheese for Aldi, but don’t get the recognition. They’re also pissed off that Australians are generally cheese philistines, preferring mass-produced cheddar from Bega over a lovely Tasmanian Pyengana (one of the few very good Australian hard cheeses)
I can undestand the frustration, but I have little sympathy, because in general the ‘cheese’ that these so-called artisans make in Australia is complete shit, and they have hence contributed to our philistinery.
Particulary in the soft-mould cheese category, virtually all Brie and Camembert style cheese in Australia are tasteless rubbish. Aldi’s Emporio brand camembert is as good as anything Jindi or Millawa put out and so far hasn’t killed anyone with listeria.
They are partly excused by the irrational ban on raw-milk cheese in Australia, which means it’s impossible to make a real soft-mould cheese with any taste. However some of these ‘artisans’ lobbied for this ban to shut out the vastly superior competition from French imports, so they’re even more at fault. However, even the pasteurised milk cheese from France is in a parallel universe of quality to ours, and even the mass produced stuff like Roquefort Société, sold in supermarket chains like Carrefour, Auchan etc, absolutely craps on any of our blue cheeses.
So stuff our artisan cheesemakers. Like their french counterparts, they’re Katterites to a tee, but unlike the Frogs they make crap product*, as there’s less within-country competition. They also charge stupid amounts for their ‘artisanal’ cheese – 5-10 times what the vastl;y superior French stuff sells for locally.
*Notable exceptions are Woodside & Holy Goat goats cheese, Pyengana and Heidi cheddar/gruyere, Tarrago river shadows of blue and one or 2 others. King Island is reasonable but by no means world class. Jindi, Millawa etc – complete shite.
papachango
19 Feb 13 at 1:35 pm
I’ll come to the defence of Aldi. Their brie and camembert are very good. The grated Parmesan is a fine addition too.
Where Aldi really shines is in the chocolate range… mmmmm divine.
NoraC
19 Feb 13 at 1:42 pm
Cracker Barrel Extra Sharp for me. It even crumbles when you cut it, which is obviously a sign of high quality cheese. That blue Kraft cheese that comes in foil is pretty good shit too.
I have become a butter connoisseur though. Nothing like a high end Danish butter to get the scrambloed eggs humming.
Infidel Tiger
19 Feb 13 at 1:47 pm
papachango, indeed you state it well. I do recall my wife finding the Heidi Gruyere to be surprisingly edible. Woodside indeed also produce her favourite goat’s juice. I’ll get her onto the Pyengana and Holy Goat (I think she’s had that before though). King Island as you say is averagely edible.
Otherwise yes, the hard cheese industry is simply a misnomer. It should be called the hard shit industry. Ditto with the runny stuff. The lysteria poisoning is a fucking disgrace, and a warning shot across the bows of all smug organic ripoff merchants.
Uber
19 Feb 13 at 1:49 pm
This is the one:
http://www.kraftafh.com.au/images/products/Cheese/cheddar.jpg
Infidel Tiger
19 Feb 13 at 1:50 pm
The problem with generic brand products is that five minutes after winning an award the retailer can go and source the product to a cheaper spec from a different supplier. Different batches on the same shelf may come from completely different suppliers. You have no guarantee of consistency beyond what the label says the product is.
At least with a small producer, that expectation is generally maintained.
For cornflour you wouldn’t care so much. For something as finicky as your favourite wine or cheese, you might do so more. Still, enjoy any bargain you find while they’re there – that’s what shopping’s all about.
Craig Mc
19 Feb 13 at 1:51 pm
Nescafe is crap but International Roast is worse.
If I have to drink coffee out of a jar, it is Moccona classic medium roast. Otherwise, I go without.
Helen Armstrong
19 Feb 13 at 1:53 pm
candy (12.27pm) I understand your joy.
When my insufferably PC daughter-in-law comes a-calling, there’s no Coon cheese allowed…in order to not offend.
And no Gin + tonic either!
Mantaray
19 Feb 13 at 1:54 pm
“hi res photo in the Archibald”, pffft, “a turnip wouldn’t be permitted as an Archibald entry so why should Aldi cheese win the award, whaaaaa! whaaaha! someone call me a whaaaambulance!”
Harold
19 Feb 13 at 1:58 pm
On the other hand, an incompetent daub, allegedly representing a politically correct celebrity, can win an Archibald Prize.
Deadman
19 Feb 13 at 2:05 pm
Please, let’s not get into one of those luvvie “I found this delightful little winery with a cheeky cab sav” discussions. Nobody with a functioning brain would deny that some small producers of just about anything produce good produce. That’s not the point.
The point is, the ‘artisans’ are ropable because their products have not won as many prizes as they think they deserve. What’s more, they are enduring “heartbreak” because their products have been judged to be inferior. Boo-bloody-hoo. It makes not a skerrick of difference to the purchasers of 99% of cheese bought in Australia.
As suggested above, awards for Participation, Most Improved, Turning Up On The Day, Most Helpful To Fellow-Competitors etc could be in order. But, they must be hand-woven from raffia, or perhaps (on reflection) from biodynamic flax.
johanna
19 Feb 13 at 2:16 pm
Helen Armstrong
19 Feb 13 at 2:19 pm
Well if you can’t have real coffee then I suppose Nescafe tastes better than any other brand of imitation coffee.
I’ve got one of those ‘pod’ coffee machines from Aldi. It makes a nice cup, and considerably cheaper than your ‘Nespresso’.
Aldi has even saved the masses from drinking instant coffee! Is there anything they can’t achieve?!!
I’m betting they’ll be the ones to eradicate malaria.
John Mc
19 Feb 13 at 2:41 pm
Uber – most Aussie soft cheese are shit because a) they’re made with pasteurised milk that kills off any flavour from the grass that the cows eat, and b) they are pre-ripened, unlike real Brie and Camembert which mature from the outside in. King Island and Aldi’s emporio range are exceptions to this, so it’s no wonder they won some prizes. Properly matured cheese is at it’s best immediately before the use by date (after it starts to develop ammonia). Ironically Aldi often sell their most delicious, ready to eat soft cheese at half price.
Still it’s no wonder we don’t have a frickin’ clue about cheese in this country. Even the so-called celebrity chefs are clueless. I was watching that bloke who is on immediately prior to the Bolt Report on Sunday mornings – dunno his name, but he looked like a bit of a surfie dope-head with blondish curly hair.
Anyway he was making a ‘gourmet baguette’ with brie and caramelised onion or somesuch. The ‘brie’ he used wasn’t even the pre-ripened crap – worse, it was the long life stuff that is frozen. The Kraft processed cheddar equivalent of soft cheese. Utterly unforgivable – like making tiramisu with cateres belnd instant coffee granules.
papachango
19 Feb 13 at 2:55 pm
Yep, spot on. I’ll buy good quality stuff from small producers until the cows come home (no pun intended) but I won’t pay extortionate prices for overrated rubbish. I’m a man who loves his cheese, sausages, wine and coffee and will pay a bit extra for the good stuff, but I won’t be ripped off by second rate product masquerading as premium quality.
tbh
19 Feb 13 at 3:00 pm
Could be a conflict of interest there for some competitors, Helen.
johanna
19 Feb 13 at 3:01 pm
papachango – agree that most brie and camembert-style cheeses here have bugger-all flavour. You might as well be eating three-week old Edam in liquid form.
My olds (Dutch, what a surprise) let some of the cheese they buy sit in the crisper for weeks or more before they eat it. If it grows a bit of mould, sometimes they cut it off and sometimes they don’t. They get it out of the vacuum pack and wrap it tightly in a paper bag first.
A favourite for this treatment is Gouda with caraway seeds through it – it tastes a bit like parmesan-style cheeses when given this treatment. Wonderful on pasta or shaved on a sandwich with cured meat and pickled veges (sour gherkins, mild chilis, mixed veg, all in vinegar).
But, I digress. DOWN WITH … errr …
johanna
19 Feb 13 at 3:19 pm
Faceache, bean tokens? Que? (With that response, obviously no).
And International roast comes in small tins which can be safely put in a tuckerbox on the back of the ute. Add boiling water and some Nestle condensed milk out of a tube, and you have a decent cup of stimulant in the cool AM in the bush. Lefty geological acquaintances ponce around with their plunger coffee cups and gourmet cheese and crackers.
Back in civilisation its an espresso out of the machine made by Nespresso in the morning. One of those wee capsules – whilst reading the morning news on the PC (No effing Ipad either).
Louis Hissink
19 Feb 13 at 3:28 pm
So can Robert Timms, Louis, made in a billy and drunk from a pannikin before sun rise it is a splendid heart starter, enjoyed for may years. Can I tempt you? (you can decant it into smaller tins hide it behind the seat if you wish.)
But I can see you enjoy stirring with your coffee. It may be the stirring that gives most pleasure?
Helen Armstrong
19 Feb 13 at 4:26 pm
King Island is probably the best Aussie cheese, and despite being a little relatively pricey, is still cheap for quality grub.
.
19 Feb 13 at 4:30 pm
International Roast is a nice mild coffee, makes a nice hot drink.
candy
19 Feb 13 at 4:31 pm
Do like King Island cheese. Their triple cream brie is good stuff. I’m sure there are better things available in other places, but I like it.
tbh
19 Feb 13 at 4:31 pm
It might make a nice hot drink, but calling it coffee is like calling to blokes getting hitched a marriage.
Infidel Tiger
19 Feb 13 at 4:34 pm
International Roast is disgusting. Hydrochloric acid tastes better. To call I.R. ‘coffee’ is nothing short of false advertising.
Gab
19 Feb 13 at 4:36 pm
Have to agree, Gab. IR is vile. And I say that as someone who has Nescafe, strong, with milk and sugar, as the daily heartstarter. Never fails.
Brewed coffee is for the afternoon or evening.
johanna
19 Feb 13 at 4:41 pm
You know my opinion of IR, but this description by Louis is a TVC in the making, along the lines of “When a man’s got a thirst” beer commercial. Something akin to ‘only real men drink I.Roast’ etc.
Gab
19 Feb 13 at 4:47 pm
Gab, it’s more like “only desperate men drink IR”.
johanna
19 Feb 13 at 5:17 pm
Instant coffee is alright for cooking – seriously, who’d use freshly ground coffee for this? – but I’ve got to have my freshly ground coffee beans for the morning drink. I miss my old espresso machine, the plunger is fun but not as good.
TimT
19 Feb 13 at 5:40 pm
seriously, who’d use freshly ground coffee
to make Tiramisu? Me. And the Italians everywhere.
Gab
19 Feb 13 at 5:43 pm
Lets not cede good food to the Left shall we? They already own movies and art, and are making serious inroads into food with hipster dining. I’m buggered if I’m giving up my Brie de Meaux and freshly roasted arabica bean caffe macchiato because it doesn’t fit with my political views.
Though I draw the line at Fairtrade coffee – not just because of unacceptable interference in the market, but because it tastes like shit. The coffee producers have no incentive to procude a quality product as they’re all paid the same ‘fair’ (as determined by some UN committee) price.
papachango
19 Feb 13 at 6:08 pm
The left no nothing about good taste apart from what they read in magazines. People of the right have an ingrained sense of what is acceptable to put in one’s mouth.
What’s more we are better looking, better roots and better all round company.
Infidel Tiger
19 Feb 13 at 6:14 pm
noknowInfidel Tiger
19 Feb 13 at 6:15 pm
So what’s with all this crap from supposed ‘people ofthe right’ about International Roast being anything oter than disgusting bilge scrapings?
Amen to that.
papachango
19 Feb 13 at 7:08 pm
It’s probably the best soft mould cheese made here, and it’s one of the few that ripen traditionally (from the ouside in), but the standard here is so low that’s no compliment. It’s about 10-20% of the quality of a typical French brie or camembert however, and five times the price. You simply can’t make good soft cheese from pasteurised milk.
papachango
19 Feb 13 at 7:13 pm
I quite like Aldi’s camembert. The nicest lamb shanks I ever bought came from there too.
Tracey
19 Feb 13 at 7:21 pm
Cheap coffee is a false economy in my book.
My mother in law prefers International Roast over my own espresso. Then again she drinks her wine with ice blocks and I often give her the half bottles of plonk that have been sitting in the fridge for two weeks and she doesn’t bat an eyelid.
Infidel Tiger
19 Feb 13 at 7:34 pm
With the high Aussie, you’re getting lots of french stuff coming in and to be honest, it’s the best whether wine or cheese.
Frog Brie is just fucking delicious. It’s not to take anything away from the King Island stuff but it’s like comparing a Mercedes to a Ford Fairlane.
Jc
19 Feb 13 at 7:52 pm
IT
So your mother in Law is a leftie?
Jc
19 Feb 13 at 7:53 pm
She votes Liberal but once told me with great admiration how wonderful the Welcome To Country ceremonies were. Luckily her husband is very sensible and tells her what to do. As it should be.
Infidel Tiger
19 Feb 13 at 8:00 pm
I can undestand the frustration, but I have little sympathy, because in general the ‘cheese’ that these so-called artisans make in Australia is complete shit, and they have hence contributed to our philistinery.
Adrien
19 Feb 13 at 8:07 pm
Sigh….the #1 meat is the wild venison that you took after an hour stalk at the bush line in worsening freezing sleet, and 3 hours from your fly camp, 4 hours with 80lbs of boned red deer on your back.
You will do a witness-less ordeal alone that only other NZ deerstalkers understand….you may have to bivi the night under a dripping punga fern in a bag with your boots on while your breath freezes and reflect that you would be nowhere else on earth doing anything else at this moment.
Wild veno that has been carried on your back is the food of kings.
Please do as much theatre going and ‘confronting’ gallery viewing as you can….as long as you keep away from my mountains and rivers, I’ll vote to subsidise your arse every time.
Alfonso
19 Feb 13 at 8:28 pm
You simply can’t make good soft cheese from pasteurised milk.
The bries and camemberts put me off last year, not so much for the pasteurised milk thing (we can get raw milk fairly easily) but the temperature control aspect. Australian weather isn’t really suitable for some types of cheese making and brie and camembert seem particularly problematic in this respect. Maybe a lot of artisan cheesemakers have a similar problem.
This year I’d like to give a few smelly cheeses a go. First cab off the rank, one the weather starts to cool down here in Melbourne, will probably be a Muenster….
TimT
19 Feb 13 at 8:41 pm
What the fuck are you on about Alfonso?
.
19 Feb 13 at 9:01 pm
You’re a bit slow tonight, Null.
I also love team sports that keeps even more of them out of my mountains and rivers on weekends.
Alfonso
19 Feb 13 at 9:06 pm
I don’t know where these wingnuts get off. Take the Millawa Cheese Company as an example. I love their cheese. When driving down that way, I make a special detour to their factory to buy up big.
They were founded in 1988, and they’ve grown nicely since then and gone from strength to strength. All companies start small, and the successful ones grow and grow and become big ones. An artisan cheesemaker who stays small might be good at making cheese, but crap at running a business and expanding product lines and markets.
boy on a bike
19 Feb 13 at 9:23 pm
So what you are saying is you are being subsidised as well. Gotcha.
.
19 Feb 13 at 9:29 pm
I don’t like cheese.
Too cheesy.
Should be taxed more than things I like.
jumpnmcar
19 Feb 13 at 9:32 pm
Err…how?
Alfonso
19 Feb 13 at 9:35 pm
Too right JC. Except that, while it still craps on King Island, the Frog Brie that is sold here is an export version made with pasteurised milk (in compliance with our dumfuck laws that some of our cheesemakers lobbied for), and nothing like the stuff you get over there.
Go to France, get a proper Brie or Camembert au lait cru (made with raw milk) – doesn’t matter the brand, pick any from the supermarket.
That compared to the frog stuff sold here, then compared to king island (the best Aussie soft cheese) is like Rolls Royce – Mercedes – Ford Fairlane. It’s insane the difference.
papachango
19 Feb 13 at 10:36 pm
Sorry – their cheese is substandard crap. Awful stuff, just a waste of calories. Millawa gold washed rind was half decent once (if you like stinky cheeses), but for the last few years has been insipid rubbish, like their ‘brie’ has always been.
These fuckwits also lobbied the government back in the day to ban the competition – raw milk French imports, so even if their cheese was any good I’d never spend a cent with the evil pricks.
papachango
19 Feb 13 at 10:41 pm
Never done the deer shooting thing myself (a few ducks & rabbits in my younger days though), but I can appreciate how that would have to taste darn good…
papachango
19 Feb 13 at 10:59 pm
Good thing we banned raw milk cheeses.
wreckage
19 Feb 13 at 11:04 pm