It’s become a pretty place. About three quarters of an hour’s drive from either Jozi or Pretoria, the Van Gaalen Kaasmakerij (Cheese Farm) stands on the Skeerpoort. We’re really in North West. The river is as brown as I’ve ever known it but flows merrily through a fertile valley below the mountain of the same name.

I remember a couple of previous visits, one for the famous cheese picnic on the bank of the river. The picnic sites themselves were dry stands, demarcated areas, but the cheese and the wine were good and we had a fine time.

The green picnic glades that were once dry demarcations. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

The picnic spots have grown into green glades named after cheeses and the river banks are grassy. A couple with one of the lovely round picnic baskets on their table are having a furious argument instead of a good time. But the same river now pushes against lively bamboo stems.

I’ve also been out here to buy cheese before and today I plan to do the same, after attending a cheese-making talk on the lawn, under a tree. Funny how I thought airily that I knew all about cheese-making after making a few programmes about it and am finding there’s a lot I don’t know.

Did I know that figs’ “milk” is a coagulant just as effective as rennet from a calf? No, but the Romans did. It’s what Van Gaalen kindly uses these days.

Cutting the curds creates more surface area from which whey can run off. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

Did I ever wonder why the subsequent curds are then cut up? No, I hadn’t but now that I know that it’s to create more surface area from which the whey can run off, I see the sense in it.

Did I know the difference between Gouda and boerenkaas? No, I thought they were the same thing. Practically they are, except that boerenkaas is made with unpasteurised or raw milk.

We all get paper plates studded with tiny samples of Van Gaalen’s craft Gouda. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

In our plastic chair rows, we all get paper plates studded with tiny samples of Van Gaalen’s craft Gouda cheeses at various stages of development and variety. On each plate is a wooden cocktail stick. I spot the thumbnail size bit of nettle cheese at once. My chief reason for being here is to buy a huge piece of it.

Another reason is the hike and maybe I’ll have time for a cheese lunch afterwards. Most of the cars in the parking lot seem to be here, not just for this cheese talk, I can judge by looking around, but presumably for the biking and hiking trails, maybe even breakfasts on the far patio, The Terrace. Van Gaalen doesn’t sell cheese online but experiences. Cheese tours of which this chat is the first part are popular experiences, following the even more popular picnics and trails.

I notice I’m the only one picking the pieces of cheese off my plate with my fingers. Everyone else is politely using their little toothpicks. The first bit of cheese for tasting, in the middle of each plate, is very young, very soft Gouda-to-be. 

Victor Schipper is the eldest son of the second generation. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

“Joe, maar dis lekker,” enthuses my seated neighbour to her husband, who agrees enthusiastically. I have a feeling they’re not going to enjoy the mature cheese taste at the end. When at the Belnori cheesery in February (Goat farm churns out world cheese awards winners) I learned that the South African market loves the sweet stracchino cheeses, in other words, hardly cheese yet, just a day or so old. It’s disappointing in one way but they make plenty of quick money for the producers. 

Now we taste off our paper plates the semi-mature pieces of about two months, a cumin, my favourite stinging nettle Gouda and a mild chilli one. The next and last one is a mature Gouda morsel from a cheese over four months old. The breeze is already taking some of the plates, toothpicks flying off with them.

Hand making the Gouda in the all-creamy, all-clean Gouda dairy. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

Victor Schipper leads his troupe indoors to the wide windows looking into the actual dairy and the cheesemaker hand making the Gouda, the traditional old way. Another window looks into a cool room stacked with the Goudas the cheesemaker paints over with sealant. Better than wax and apparently more edible, it prevents bacteria from performing any mouldy tricks on Van Gaalen’s cheeses. I’ve been impressed by the way Victor’s keeping things plain but not oversimplified since there are children in the audience, learning the most.

Another window looks into a cool room stacked with today’s real cheeses. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

He’s the eldest son of the second generation. Annelies van Gaalen learned the cheese making of her ancestors because she wanted to introduce Dutch cheese to South Africans who seemed only to have ersatz Cheddar and “rooiskil kaas” before the 1990s. I too remember that dearth of South African cheeses or even cheeses in South Africa in the ‘80s. Thank heavens that’s all changed quite wonderfully and rather quickly.

Coffee time on a shady patio means soft, deliciously moist pieces of Dutch apple cake and a queue for coffee where the milk is long-life commercial, surprising for a cheesery that brings in all those kilolitres of Jersey milk every day from Pretoria University’s sustainable agricultural farm.

Soft pieces of Dutch apple cake with coffee on a shady patio. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

Annelies’ husband, Erik Schipper, began the trails for mountain biking, hiking and birding. There are now more than 100 kilometres of well-maintained and changing trails over 50 private properties. 

I set off on the river trail, a tortuous walk that seems to loop in on itself so often that I can’t figure out which way north is. There’s a great section over a very swingy swing bridge too. Most of the riverside is bamboo and I pass through many hewn bamboo tunnels. There are strange, slightly scary rustlings every now and then near the water and now I see some vervet monkeys, no doubt responsible for those. The only people I see on the trail are a friendly family building what looks like a raft.

It’s well past lunchtime when I get back but there is still time for a lavish cheese platter for one. It includes three slices of my favourite nettle cheese among the cumin, chilli and plain Gouda pieces, olives, homemade chicken liver pâté, grapes, biscuits and fresh bread. I eat almost all of it before I get up to buy my long-desired stinging nettle Gouda at the Van Gaalen shop. I tasted it at the first picnic I attended here, in the place’s early days and fell for it. I came out to buy more a few years later and they were out of stock. I’m back for it. Although they make 90 kilograms of cheese a day, Van Gaalen doesn’t supply the likes of Woolies or even any boutique cheese outlets. These lovely cheeses are impossible to get unless you’re here. I am. 

The shop stocks 30 kinds of Gouda. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

The shop stocks 30 kinds of Gouda and even some non-Gouda cheeses in another fridge, from nearby farms. There are Goudas with many inclusions like garlic-and-onion or pesto but I’m single-minded here.

I feel desperate. They’ve sold out of the stinging nettle cheese. I must be looking wild-eyed because one of the two saleswomen says she’ll look to see if there’s a whole wheel if I really want to buy that much of it. I do. 

There’s no wheel of stinging nettle cheese available. The other assistant recommends my buying some basil cheese and assures me “it’s very similar”. I also get some well matured Gouda.

The well matured Gouda is exciting, excellent. For some reason the label reads “mature boerenkaas”. I know some artisanal Dutch cheese sells as boerenkaas Gouda though it too uses pasteurised milk. 

Cheese platter with slices of Van Gaalen’s real stinging nettle cheese among others. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

The basil tastes more like origanum so it’s a bit pizza-like in the cheese. I am sure it is marvellous for someone else. For me it’s Van Gaalen’s real stinging nettle craft cheese all the way. But not home with me. Yet. DM/TGIFood

Van Gaalen Cheese Farm, [email protected], farm shop 083 226 7834, Terrace Restaurant 079 173 5071.

The writer supports Nosh Food Rescue, an NGO that helps Jozi feeding schemes with food ‘rescued’ from the food chain. Please support them here.