Tusheti part 1 : Trekking amongst shepherds, a cheese called Guda.

The quest for my grail cheese.

3 cheeses that had aged in one sack.

Tusheri Guda is an ancient cheese that is made by the Tushetian herders during their summer transhumance to the Caucasus highlands of Georgia. It was formerly aged in dried sheep hides turned inside out, with the trimmed wool in contact with the cheese.  Since the 90s plastic bags have replaced the use of hides.  Some individuals and an organization have attempted to revive the use of the skins, and I came it see if I could find anyone using them. I have obsessed over this cheese for years and it has become a kind of holy grail for me, representing the historical roots of milk preservation as an outgrowth of mobile pastoralism.

Tusheti sheep (slow food arc if taste) on their summer grasslands

The herds of mainly sheep with some goats, and separate cow herds are brought to Tusheti in May, often before the single high elevation pass in officially opens, but once plows have gotten in and cleared most of the snow.  The herders walk and ride horses up from two villages at the base of the mountains. It takes 5 days to get back into the more remote valleys where I am now backpacking, visiting and staying in sheep camps where cows and sheep are milked in outdoor corrals, and cheese made in tents or small cabins.  The herders all welcome me, despite the language barrier, and immediately offer me coffee or tea, bread, cheese and sheep stew if they have it. I use google translate to tell them what I am interested in, and they patiently communicate back with body language and a combination of Russian/German/English.  Like other mobile pastoralists in border regions, most are bi or multilingual, but English is not common.

A typical shepherds hut low stone walls and tarp over a pole frame.

I will now relate 3 nights spent at one camp.

Dariel milks the sheep

The sheep come down from a day spent grazing unattended on steep grassy hillsides to sleep near the camp along a river.  At first light they are pushed tightly into a corral made of 3 aisles that can be further split into sections.  3 herders start at one end and work down the aisles, milking each sheep or goat, and pushing them to the front of the aisle. 

Milk pails covered in wool and poop, they set them on the ground while milking.

They milk into antique looking wood milk pails, and pour the milk through a filter cloth over a mesh strainer over a funnel full of nettles.  I see the nettles as partially a filter and also potentially a antimicrobial agent.  They are used in many places, as the hairs of the leaves catch debris.  Nettles also thrive in areas heavily impacted by livestock.

Nettle as one layer of milk filtration

The milk is filtered into the blue plastic barrels that all the makers up here appear to use.  In the past I imagine a wood barrel was used, but I have not confirmed this.  The barrel is insulated with sheep wool.  The herders milk 3 times over the course of 3-4 hours, then hot water is poured into the milk to raise the temp to around 38 I estimate. 

The blue plastic barrels insulated with wool used to make cheese in.

Rennet, called Shabooshi here, is added.  It is made by cutting up dried calf abomasums full of coagulated milk, and steeping them in whey.  The abomasums, known as vells, are bought from butchers in the lowlands, and hung in the rafters of the tents where cheese is made and food prepared, getting lightly smoked from the campfire. The rennet is also a culture in this context, with the sour whey. In some places there is not a distinction made between culture and rennet.

Abomasums from which rennet is made.

This process is an interesting hybrid of very well established techniques, natural materials with modern industrial plastic. Obviously I want to see the old ways and tools, but I have to accept that the herders are doing what mobile pastoralists have always done: improvising, working with what is available to them, adapting their lives and foodways to the introduction of new materials.  The more I search for “traditional” cheesemaking, the more I find the word is problematic.

The concept of traditional is a creation and projection of the present. It is often more misguided romanticism than an accurate representation of the reality of historical times. The old ways were never static, the idea of a golden age when all cheesemakers made cheese over a fire, worked with handcrafted natural materials, and made their own rennet is a fantasy.  There is no clear line with the natural, traditional on one side, and industrial, modern on the other.  I am obviously interested in the “traditional” and opposed to much of the “industrial”, but I wish to introduce more nuance into the discussion and look at how well established but never static practices evolve, and what the role of these older ways of working with livestock and fermenting milk may be in the present and future.

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The milk coagulated over 1.5 hours into a soft curd, little acidity can be detected by taste.  It is cut with a homemade harp of wood and string.  The soft, variable sized curds and clumps of curds are left to sit as whey is released.  This whey is skimmed off the top after 10-15 minutes, the curd removed and placed into woven plastic bags sitting in a metal bucket.  The curd rests in one corner of the bag, and this is pressed by hand on a wood table, to remove whey and consolidate a single cheese.

Curd is placed in the woven plastic sack.

The cone cheese is lightly kneaded on a wood table.

The cone is place upside down on a drain table for 30 minutes. The days 4 cheeses are then stacked inside a non-porous plastic bag filled with a heavy hand of salt, and whey.  This is placed back inside the grain bag, and the opening is tightly tied with string. The cheeses sit in the whey, next to a fire for 1-2 days, and the plastic begins to swell with gas, it is then moved to a shaded tent where it sits on wool or branches until it is taken to the lowlands in the fall to be sold.

The sacks of cheese and brine sit in their tent.

  I came here looking for a cheese that matched my ideals, the opposite of the industrial paradigm of food safety.  This had become my grail quest, and was likely a similarly grandiose venture.  I found a reality that was quite different.  The grail appears to be lined with plastic now, and the shepherds have solar panels for charging smartphones.

Ideals and certainty are valuable to many, but for me are roadblocks to learning and growth.  I can’t come to these places and tell people “you should use wood vats, and put cheese in sheep skins again.”  I feel it is a furthering of the colonial concept of noble savagery to expect pastoralists to:

1. Be simple folk removed from our reality, and

2. Put themselves in a museum, where we can come see how natural and romantic their lives are.

I hope to convey a slice of what is actually happening, through my subjective eyes. Some members of pastoral groups are attempting to preserve, protect, or revive their cultural practices of milk preservation.  Other members want to leave the sheep camps and work in America or Germany.  To send their children to school so they can move to cities and get good jobs.  It would be arrogant of me to tell them they should keep being shepherds, it’s a tough life that doesn’t pay well, and I don’t want to romanticize it.  So things are shifting, like they always have.  The past collides with the future, and the human saga unfolds, a beautiful and tragic scroll that we are reading and writing, interpreting and editing, all in the inconceivable present.