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The Swiss Cheese That Found a Way to Be Both Hard and Soft

The Swiss Cheese That Found a Way to Be Both Hard and Soft

Hard cheeses and soft, melting cheeses are usually treated as two separate categories entirely, each chosen for different occasions. Kaltbach Creamy, stocked by Pong Cheese, sits in an unusual middle ground — a hard Gruyère-style cheese engineered specifically to behave with the melt-in-the-mouth softness normally associated with much younger, creamier cheeses.

Extra cream as the defining technical detail

What separates Kaltbach Creamy from a standard Gruyère is a deliberately increased proportion of Swiss cream folded into the recipe during production. That extra cream content is precisely why the cheese achieves its signature texture — soft and smooth enough to practically melt on contact, despite technically sitting in the hard cheese category by classification.

Cave-ageing in genuine sandstone, not a marketing backdrop

The cheese is matured specifically in the Kaltbach sandstone caves in Switzerland — caves reported to be around 22 million years old — where the mineral-rich, naturally humid environment shapes the final flavour as the cheese ages. That's a meaningfully different ageing process from the steel-and-concrete ageing rooms used by many commercial cheesemakers, and it's a detail that genuinely shows up in the finished product's depth of flavour.

A four-to-five month ageing window, not a rushed turnaround

Rather than a young, fast-produced cheese, Kaltbach Creamy ages for roughly four to five months before release — long enough to develop a genuinely nutty, subtly sweet character, but short enough relative to harder aged Gruyères that the texture stays soft rather than turning crumbly or dense.

An award that reflects genuine recognition, not just brand claims

Kaltbach Creamy has been recognised as an award winner at the World Cheese Awards — one of the most established and widely respected competitions in the cheese industry, where products are judged by independent panels of cheese experts rather than scored on brand reputation alone.

A cheese built to work both on its own and in cooking

Beyond serving it simply sliced on a cheeseboard, the cheese's melting quality makes it genuinely well suited to cooked dishes — Pong Cheese specifically highlights it working well in baked gratins and savoury biscuits, where its creaminess translates into a smooth, cohesive melt rather than the stringy or greasy result some harder cheeses produce when heated.

Packaged in a genuine 200g wedge, not a pre-sliced pack

The cheese is sold as a 200g wedge rather than pre-sliced portions — a format that better preserves freshness and lets the buyer cut it to whatever thickness suits a particular use, from thin slices for a cheeseboard to thicker chunks for melting into a dish.

At a glance

Who it suits

This cheese suits anyone who loves the flavour depth of an aged Gruyère but prefers a softer, creamier texture — equally good served on a cheeseboard or melted into a gratin, fondue, or savoury bake. Anyone specifically after a firmer, more crumbly aged cheese with a sharper bite should look at Pong Cheese's Kaltbach Le Gruyère AOC instead, which carries a longer ageing period and a correspondingly firmer, stronger character. Shop Kaltbach Creamy at Pong Cheese — **

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