The cheese board actually looks like a cheese board. A camembert, a ricotta called “Free the Goat” – two types of cream cheese, one with Greek herbs, the other with pepper. There are two bowls with cheese cream, one smells of garlic and green herbs, the other of tomatoes and basil. Everything is appetizingly arranged on a wooden board in a conference room of the company “New Roots” in Oberdiessbach. The place is in the Bernese Mittelland, from this region also comes the Emmentaler, the most famous Swiss cheese.
But the cheeses on the tasting board have little in common with traditional Emmentaler, and not just because they have no holes. They look like cheese, they actually taste like cheese, but they are not what we mean by cheese in the traditional sense. Cheese is not only a “food made from milk (from cows, sheep or goats) that is eaten as a topping or spread on bread”. The camemberts, ricottas and fresh cheeses from “New Roots” are made on the basis of cashew nuts, completely without any animal ingredients.
Replacement products are still a controversial topic today
Cheese made from nuts, is that really cheese – or, from a culinary point of view, maybe even “stupid stuff”, which, by the way, is the second meaning that the Duden offers for “cheese”? Freddy Hunziker and his partner Alice Fauconnet, the founders of the vegan cheese dairy, are pursuing the ambitious plan of developing plant-based alternatives with equivalent taste to animal products made from cow, sheep and goat milk. “Many people say they would like to live completely vegan if they don’t have to go without cheese,” says Rebecca Grunder, who is responsible for communication and business development at “New Roots”.
The 27-year-old company founder is sitting at the computer in the office, but has no time to tour his cheese dairy. The PR department at “New Roots” takes care of journalist inquiries. Possibly also because the image of so-called substitute products is still a culinary issue that has poor reputation and is therefore a sensitive one. Rebecca Grunder likes to serve visitors figures and, where necessary, also ideologically suggested snacks. Since 2014, Fauconnet and Hunziker have been working on producing cheese without animal suffering, but with a real cheese taste. With great success: The company is growing, products from Oberdiessbach are sold through the Swiss supermarket chains Migros and Coop, in organic stores in Zurich, Berlin, Hamburg, Paris, London and Amsterdam as well as in vegan online shops.
The vegan dairy also plays with Swiss clichés, but the milk is made from cashew nuts.
(Photo: Pascale Amez / New Roots)
The market for vegan substitute products is booming, seitan sausages, tofu strips and cheese without animal milk are a bomb business. Plant-based cheese substitutes have of course been around for a long time, and tofu – curdled soy milk – is basically plant-based cheese. Since the food industry discovered the potential of vegan substitute products, you can also buy pizza cheese, mozzarella and slices without animal milk in the supermarket. This artificial cheese is made from soy, palm oil or other vegetable fats, mostly with the help of artificial flavors, emulsifiers and starch.
Much of it is “analog cheese with politically supposedly correct ingredients”, says the vegan Munich chef Surdham Göb, “but the taste doesn’t really make you happy.” Göb teaches at the Plant Based Institute in Berlin, a private academy for vegan cooks. And he experiments a lot with vegan dairy products, but does not pursue the goal of copying the original cow cheese taste with the help of artificial flavors or yeast: “A natural product should remain a natural product.”
The dairy is a bit like a secret laboratory
The founders of “New Roots” came up with the idea of making vegan cheese like cow cheese, i.e. through fermentation. Traditional cheesemakers often tinker with fat and protein content, degrees of ripeness and herbs for years until they achieve the desired taste. It is similar with the vegan cheese from “New Roots”: At the beginning there are many experiments, many of them fail, especially since there is little experience in the field. Freddy Hunziker, a former mountain bike professional and vegan by conviction, had an accident a few years ago and experimented extensively with nuts and seeds during rehab. At some point he found the perfect mixture that should serve as the basis for the vegan cheese: ground cashew nuts mixed with water to make plant-based milk. Vegetable rennet causes the nut milk to curdle. Bacterial cultures, as they are also used in conventional cheese production, provide flavor or, if desired with Camembert, cause mold to form. The lactic acid bacteria come from plant fermentation.
During a tour through the sterile production rooms of “New Roots”, some of the things remind you of a hypermodern secret laboratory, some of a traditional cheese dairy. Rebecca Grunder enters a code, opens the hygiene lock and leads the visitor into the factory. It smells of cleaning products, the tiles are scrubbed clean, all employees are wearing plastic suits, hairnets and gloves. Chilled vegetable milk is stored in shiny steel tanks, and conveyor belts transport finished products for shipping, including yogurt, which is sold in Swiss supermarkets. The founders of “New Roots” started on 40 square meters, since 2020 25 people have been working in the new halls in Oberdiessbach on 4000 square meters. The team also includes cheese maker Verena Looser, who is responsible for developing the products. She learned in a classic Appenzell cheese dairy and is now trying to create cheesy products from plants.
The “New Roots” Camembert “Soft White”.
(Photo: Pascale Amez / New Roots)
You are furthest with the Camembert “Soft White”, whose consistency and taste actually come very close to a cow Camembert. It melts on the tongue, tastes spicy and mild at the same time. If you let it sit longer, however, it does not melt like a French soft cheese, the risk is more that it dries out. “A vegan cheese can mature, only the taste and consistency change differently than with animal raw materials,” says Surdham Göb, “what is missing here is the restructuring of the lactose by bacteria.” That doesn’t mean that vegan cheese can’t taste as good as cow or goat cheese, it just tastes different: “Bacteria and mold can mask the nut taste, but a vegan camembert will probably never feel like a camembert made from cow’s milk . “
It’s similar with vegan ricotta, which looks grainy, salty and fresh like a traditional ricotta, but doesn’t taste like sheep or cow. Lately, “New Roots” has also been experimenting with hard cheese, as Verena Looser explains. And that is a rather lengthy project. “It’s more difficult than with classic cheese because you can’t fall back on centuries of experience,” says dairy specialist Looser. All cheeses from the vegan cheese factory consist of the same basic ingredients: cashew nuts from Burkina Faso and Vietnam, water, salt and lactic acid bacteria from plant fermentation cultures.
Good results can be achieved especially with non-dairy soft cheese. Making hard cheese is much more difficult.
(Photo: New Roots)
Importing nuts from Vietnam and Burkina Faso, can that really be sustainable? However, compared to the CO2 balance of a cow, the CO2 emissions during transport by ship can be neglected with a clear conscience. According to the cheese manufacturer, the organic cashews are organically grown, not artificially irrigated and not fertilized. Cows, on the other hand, consume a lot of water, fodder and land. With a Model calculation “New Roots” illustrates that vegetable cheese can be produced in a more resource-efficient manner than animal cheese. One kilo of soft cheese made from cow’s milk requires 6300 liters of water, whereas one kilo of vegan cheese requires only half a liter of water.
Since cashews, unlike most nuts and seeds, hardly contain any fiber, there is no waste during production and no fossil energy is used for production. The nut milk is the same as the basis for the different types of cheese, it is processed differently and flavored with herbs and vegetables from regional cultivation. The company’s founders place great value on their Swiss roots, but they struggle with animal suffering for the production of conventional dairy products. In the heartland of Swiss cheese, however, this transformative approach is not always well received, to put it mildly. “At first there was ridicule and bad words from the local cheesemakers, up to and including anonymous death threats,” reports Rebecca Grunder. In the meantime, the skepticism has subsided, and classic cheese shops are also increasingly asking for vegan products from Oberdiessbach. And the local bakery has recently started selling vegan cheese sandwiches.
All employees of “New Roots” are vegetarians, animal products are frowned upon on the company premises. There is no cream with coffee, butter is taboo in the kitchen. Hardly anyone would think of grabbing a quick snack in the neighboring building. There is a smell of sausage and bacon in the parking lot next to the vegan cheese dairy. Right next to the plant cheese pioneers is the factory outlet of Lüthi & Portmann, one of the largest meat producers in Switzerland. The simple slogan of the large butcher’s shop: “Meat is our passion”.