The first time I heard about Fritz Lloyd Blomeyer was on a menu the Berlin winebar Rutz announced for a special evening. His name stood next to the cheese course like that of an artist next to his work. I googled him, but couldn’t find any address. However it became clear to me that the Rutz team was ahead of the game once again when I ordered cheese at another Berlin restaurant some weeks later. Amazed and full of respect I discovered on the plate in front of me two slices of perfectly mature Blühende Landschaften, flowering landscapes. This goat cheese from the Brandenburg top producer Capriolenhof is not only hard to find, but extremely delicate.
„We get it from Fritz Blomeyer,“ the somm said. Wow, respect, I thought, at long last somebody who bridges the logistical gap to the countryside around the city. Finally we met in October 2012, at the first Cheese Berlin at Markthalle Neun in Kreuzberg. 1.95 meters tall, in blue jeans and T-shirt, with a beard and pony tail as well as pilot shades: a beer bottle and a cool motorbike seemed the obvious other attributes. But the 28 years old prefers to talk about aged mountain cheese from the Allgäu and Riesling TBA. After he found himself thinking about jumping out of the window out of frustration during his legal studies he realised that he wanted his life to revolve around food and drink. More precisely: cheese. „My French is miserable, therefore I had to approach the subject in Germany, go from dairy to dairy to learn about it.“ First he worked a summer at an Alpine dairy in the Allgäu region, a time he calls today the toughest months of his life. But he also says that they served as his entrance ticket to the world of cheese.
His family’s background is in law, design, diplomacy and spreads from Saxony over London and New Zealand to Nepal. Fritz himself had made up his mind to sail around the world as a school kid and ended up spending a year in Cape Town instead. In spite of all this he remains a Berliner through and through: excited, convinced of what he does, but always realistic. There is not a hint of mountain-animals-nature-romanticism, just his passion for cheese. Idealistic organic do-gooder he ain’t. What’s missing in Berlin? Good German cheese. So let’s get it.
Since early 2009 he’s been working patiently on securing his share of the Berlin market, selling cheese to trendy locations such as Rutz, Bieberbau, Hugo’s, Lochner or Volt as well as some retailers. When Aufbauhaus opened on Moritzplatz in Kreuzberg, he started to sell directly from a small table set up at the Coledampf’s store every Friday afternoon. Since last year he has his own shop, on the far end of Pestalozzistraße, managed by the capable, professional Anne Michalla. His offerings are always worth the detour. „If I take something on, I have to believe in it and I want to sell people exactly those cheeses they’ll be really happy with afterwards. That’s why I make them taste them on principle, if necessary I’ll beg them to taste.“
He finds his cheeses through the contacts built up during his cheesemaking years (a number of Allgäu producers, Zurwies, Geifertshofen, Jaare) as well as a network of friends and acquaintances. He first heard about Capriolenhof when a schoolfriend and musician called and told him with great excitement that he had just tasted the absolutely best goat cheese ever, somewhere „nowhere in Brandenburg“. He dropped by on the way to his next cheese gig in Schleswig-Holstein. And was absolutely smitten, in spite of the long odyssey to find the remote estate: „When I finally found them, they put a beautiful cheese plate in front of me and the first cheese I tasted was a perfectly mature Regowbert – a dream, unbelievable. I just knew I had to work with them.“ That’s how simple things can be.
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