Slovenský oštiepok

Appearance & taste

Slovenský oštiepok has the shape of a large egg, a cone or an ellipse and is decorated with ornaments connected with the place, its customs and typical motifs. The surface is firm, smooth and shiny, golden yellow to golden brown after smoking; inside, the cheese is white to butter yellow. It is compact, firm and slightly brittle, and the cut surface shows small cracks and holes. The dry matter is at least 48 %, the fat content in dry matter at least 38 %.

The taste is distinctly cheesy, slightly sharp to sour and salty, and smoking gives a typical smoky smell. It must not taste excessively sour, yeasty, tallowy, soapy, musty, bitter or foreign. The label states whether the cheese was made by hand or industrially and, where applicable, in what ratio cow’s and sheep’s milk were used.

Production

The sheep’s milk comes from grazing sheep of the Valaška, Zošľachtená valaška and Cigája breeds, kept on the mountain slopes of the area. From April to the end of October they graze mainly on red fescue, meadow fescue, smooth meadow grass and golden oat grass, and in winter they receive hay of these grasses. The cows also graze in the area and receive hay and cereals from there.

In the mountain huts the milk is curdled, and the cheese is shaped, salted, dried and smoked. In the dairies the milk is pasteurised and a culture is added; it is curdled, heated, pressed and soured, then steamed, shaped, salted, dried and smoked. The culture of lactic acid bacteria of the genus Lactococcus was isolated from raw sheep’s milk and sheep’s cheese from Slovak mountain huts; producers obtain it from the Dairy Research Institute in Žilina. All steps take place in the area. The cooled cheese is wrapped and sold only as a whole piece, so that the shape and ornaments are not damaged.

Origin & history

The area is the mountainous part of Slovakia, bounded by the White Carpathians and other mountain ranges in the west and south, the border with Ukraine in the east and the borders with Poland and the Czech Republic in the north, including the Pieniny and the Tatras. Because it covers more than 80 % of the country, the cheese bears the name of the whole country.

According to the specification, written records and family registers of earlier farms show that the cheese was already made at the beginning of the 18th century. In 1921 the Galbavý family in Detva laid the foundation for industrial production from cow’s milk; the current methods of the dairies were developed in the 1960s and 1970s, while the principle of production stayed the same. In mountain huts and on farms with sheep’s milk the cheese is still made today. On 22 November 1967 the name was registered with WIPO in Geneva under the Lisbon Agreement, and treaties of Czechoslovakia with Switzerland, Austria and Portugal protected it. “Slovenský” only became the name of the country with the division of Czechoslovakia on 1 January 1993.