One revelation I had in the sphere of Georgian cheeses was my first taste of dambalkhacho (“moistened cottage cheese”), on my first overnight trip in Khevsureti, in the country’s north-east. This was in 2004, on the way back from Shatili. Our car had a flat tire and the four of us had to stop for the night at two connected railway wagons on the side of the road. There, the two families who were looking after flocks of their sheep welcomed us like long-lost relatives, and one of the dishes they fed us was this fabled product, a revelation to my European-cheese-raised tastebuds but (at the time) unavailable outside the region, it seemed.
Next, about 10 years later, at the opening evening of an exhibition of my photos connecting the themes of Svaneti and food in the now-defunct Focus cafe in Vake, Georgia’s “Cheese Queen”, Ms. Mikadze, brought a whole large basket of Georgian regional cheeses the like of which I had never even imagined. These perfectly accompanied the wines which were part of the event. Most of them never appear in Tbilisi markets, although the lady’s shop had them all and more, including dambalkhacho. She knows her stuff, and has done her best to preserve and popularize it to the benefit of its producers and us all.
I used to dream of such old or special cheeses here. To my tastes, the usual Georgian cheeses are either too salty from a long soak in brine or too mild from being very young. The former I would soak in water at least overnight to leach out much of that salt, then dry them uncovered in the fridge. The latter, just wrap in plastic and forget about them in the fridge for a few months to age. THEN they begin to get interesting, at least for me.
I was planning to get into cheese making in quite a big way up in our house in Svaneti, in the years when no end of our living there was in sight. I read all I could of the science and art of the subject, observing and noting all the variables: temperature, pressure, whey extraction, cut cheese size, humidity, wax covering or no, length of aging time and more. Then, soon after I had spent some money to make a food-safe cheese press, that apparatus became a casualty of our garage fire. At a similar time, we decided to give up on our small herd of cows altogether, as they were keeping us more bound to our village than we wished to be, with relatives at the other end of Georgia and also of the world. So, there went our milk supply, and with it my own will to continue… Though I still de-salt and/or age what cheeses I can get my hands on up there and also in Tbilisi.
Also, Mingrelian and Svan smoked cheeses tend to be so hard, you practically need an axe or power saw to cut them! I have tried smoking my own, for a few hours followed by a week or so in the fridge for the smoke to penetrate right through, and they retain their softness this way.
Dambalkhacho is aged, hard, crumbly, with a bit of blue or green in it, but quite a mild taste compared to European blue or green cheeses like Gorgonzola or Stilton. It has now appeared in the Gldani bazaar near Metro Akhmetelis Teatri, at 70 GEL per kg, in small round amounts. Buy it, savor it, relish it: it’s worth it. I haven’t any idea how it is made, but it is good to try and, if you like it, to support. It makes a fine fondue-type dish in a clay plate as well, as we recently discovered at the Mogoneba Cafe in Telavi. Great to dip bread into.
In short, Georgia has many, many more cheeses to discover than the two or three we typically buy, tucked away in its many regions and villages. They all deserve discovery, savoring, buying and being made famous.
Blog by Tony Hanmer
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
