“Amateur cheesemaker Beat Wampfler from Switzerland has been playing around with different genres of music in an ongoing experiment to see how they might influence the Emmental cheese he makes in his 19th-century cellar in Burgdorf, Switzerland,” writes Aoife McElwain in Saturday’s (11/24) Irish Times (Dublin). “Wampfler, who’s a veterinarian by day, has teamed up with The University of the Arts in Bern to pair his wheels of Emmental with tiny speakers playing everything from Led Zepplin to Mozart to A Tribe Called Quest. The project is called ‘Sonic cheese: experience between sound and gastronomy’ and those involved are hoping to show the impact music can have on the development, characteristics and even the flavor of the cheese. It’s not a million miles away from … the (albeit inconclusive) research around plants being positively impacted by music…. The sonic cheese project team have been intrigued and encouraged by the field of sonochemistry, which studies the impact of sound waves on solid bodies…. The cheese will be tested in the new year to see if their diet of music has had any impact on the taste of Wampfler’s cheese.” Says Wampfler, “I hope that the hip-hop cheese will be the best.”
Posted November 27, 2018
