Diary of a Shopkeeper, 26th January

Today’s chapter in the A to Z of deli food is brought to you by the letters G, H and I. (Why do I suddenly hear the theme to Sesame Street?)

G is for Gjetost, a remarkable Norwegian cheese, pronounced yay-tost. Why remarkable? Because it’s brown in colour, like Highland toffee. Because its texture is dense but soft, like creamy fudge. And because it’s sweet as butterscotch. All these remarkable features derive from the unique way it’s made. First one thing, it’s an unusual mixture of goat’s milk, and cream and whey from cow’s milk. For another, the mix is boiled for several hours, until its volume is reduced by 90%. The heat turns the milk sugars into caramel, hence the colour and sweetness.

Visiting Norwegians exclaim at the sight of gjetost in our fridge. Often they call it brunost – brown cheese. There’s another version, they tell us, called ekte geitost, ‘real goat’s cheese’, made from 100% goat’s milk. We do get that one in from time to time, but its goatiness seems less appealing to our customers than the blend.

The origins of most cheeses are lost in the distant past, but in the case of gjetost, the credit can go to one woman: Anne Hov, a milkmaid from Gudbrandsdalen about 150 miles north of Oslo. Whey milk had been boiled down into a pasty substance for centuries, but Anne had the idea of adding cream, and later goat’s milk, to the recipe. Her innovative recipe was immediately popular, and earned her fame and fortune, and a place in the cheese history books.

It’s never out of our fridge. We’ve been told by our supplier that we sell more of it than anyone else in the country. Whether that’s true I don’t know, but I like to think it’s Orkney’s residual Scandinavian tastebuds making their presence felt. How to eat it? You can just add it to a cheeseboard as an interesting complement to more conventional savoury cheeses. It can also be added to meat stews - especially game - to sweeten and thicken the sauce. I was first given it when visiting friends in Norway: they served it for breakfast, thinly pared, with coffee, crispbread, and pickled cucumber. A wonderful Bergen breakfast!

H is for Henners, our favourite English winery. Based in the rolling East Sussex countryside just five miles from the English Channel, it produces excellent sparkling wine – vintage and non-vintage – as well as very good white and rosé wine.

Wine has been made in England since Roman times, though it barely survived after they left, with only a few monasteries and suppliers to the king keeping the tradition alive. What few vineyards lingered on until the 20th century were finally ripped up when the Great War broke out: the fields were needed for crops more essential that wine grapes. But in less than a century English wine was back and better than ever. The increase in technical knowledge about vine growing and winemaking, and the establishment of college departments to teach it – like the one at Plumpton College, just 20 miles west of Henners’ vineyards – was the key factor. Growing consumer interest in local produce helped, and a warming climate made it easier to ripen grapes than it had been since Roman times.

So far it’s still sparkling and white wines that do best in England: the high acidity that comes with just-ripe grapes suits those styles. Red grapes need higher temperatures for longer period to ripen properly, and to date most English red wines are distinctly underpowered. However, they’re improving every year. A visit I made to Henners a couple of years ago revealed a team of grape growers and winemakers dedicated to using every tool at their disposal to make better, fruitier, wines. They haven’t produced a red yet, but surely it can only be a matter of time.

Until they do, I’m delighted to raise a glass of their excellent fizz to salute the renaissance of English wine, with Henners at the forefront.

I is for Italian warehouseman. Not a phrase that’s heard often these days, in Victorian times it was as common as delicatessen is now, and with more or less the same meaning.

In the Kirkness & Gorie archives (lovingly tended by Bruce Gorie) there’s a matchbox from sometime in the late 19th century, with the name of the shop, and the description Italian Warehouseman. It doesn’t mean that we sold only Italian food, but that fancy continental goods were our speciality, certainly including pasta and Italian coffee, but also French and German wine, and rarities like olive oil and preserved fruit from across Europe.

I once attended a wine tasting in Edinburgh with Philip Contini of the famed specialist food store, Valvona & Crolla. He told me that they too had archive documents referring to their Leith Walk shop as an Italian Warehouseman. They don’t mention that phrase on their website, though they do claim to be, ‘Scotland's oldest Delicatessen and Italian Wine Merchant…founded in 1934.’ I think James Kirkness, Grocer and Wine Merchant, founded in 1859, would have something to say about that!

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 30th January 2025. A new diary appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations, and occasional small corrections or additions.