- I don't want to make this video,
but I feel like I have to.
I feel like Aldi have played me like a fiddle.
They've made this.
They've got a lot of press for this as well.
It's Wensleydale cheese, but it's not.
It's espresso martini Yorkshire Wensleydale cheese.
And I, for one, am horrified.
Look, we're gonna eat it.
We're gonna eat the cheese,
I feel like I have to eat the cheese.
I don't know why Aldi hate coffee, or me,
or you, potentially, but I don't know.
I'm nervous, because, well,
let me tell you what's inside the cheese.
'Cause you're probably thinking,
"How do you make an espresso martini cheese?"
That's a very good question.
I don't know the answer to that technically,
but I'll just read the ingredients list to you.
So it is Wensleydale cheese, 82%.
I feel already Peter Sallis is turning in his grave.
- Wensleydale?
- Next ingredient, butterscotch crisp pieces.
Now look, I'm not against the cheese with inclusions.
It's not for me, I just like cheese to be cheese,
but butterscotch crisp pieces is a surprise.
Let's move on. We've got some fructose.
Why would you put fructose in this? This is so weird.
Coffee liqueur, which is composed of sugar,
water, alcohol, and coffee extract, good.
And vodka. This cheese is 2% vodka.
I guess that makes an espresso martini.
Color, ammonia caramel,
the most delicious of all the caramels,
and the preservative is potassium sorbate,
which is something I don't have a strong opinion on.
It looks kind of gross, to be honest.
It's not a good kind of brown cheese.
There is good brown cheese in the world,
and I'm generally not into sweet cheese,
but the kind of Scandinavian brown cheese,
I'm here for that.
But this is a different kind of sweet brown cheese.
And that just sounds wrong, doesn't it?
(James chuckles)
It is sweating. Let me see if you can see this.
It's a sweaty cheese. Hmm.
Let me get my cheese board,
'cause I need to put this on something in a minute.
I did also bring a cheese knife,
and as a French-made cheese knife,
I'm sure that this is horrified that this is,
you know, how its day is going, but you know.
Look at that. This is like a festive special.
And I just imagine like,
"Hey everyone, I brought cheese,"
and you put this on the plate.
This is your contribution to Christmas? Maybe it's good.
The butterscotch pieces, I can't really see them.
There's like little holes and stuff here.
This really doesn't smell of anything.
Now this thing is, I think, 10% sugar.
That's about as sweet as a sort of soft drink.
You know, it's a 9.7 grams per 100 grams come from sugars,
so my instinct to let this warm up to room temperature
will only encourage the sweetness,
and I'm not sure I want to do that.
Let's have a little slice.
(James chuckles)
That's a beautiful, perfect slice.
Let's go for a chunkier slice.
Let's feel ambitious, come on.
Are you gonna cut nicely? No, not really.
No, you're not. Okay.
Oh, you can sort of see, I think,
what must be the butterscotch pieces here.
Now you might think I should get some crackers
or something like that, some Carrs Water Biscuit,
I think the blandest and therefore
the finest textural accompaniment to cheese,
but I feel like, look, we're just gonna have to go straight.
I'm genuinely nervous. I like cheese.
I just don't know...
Who thinks coffee and cheese is a good idea? (sighs)
I'm going to have another bite.
I have opinions forming, I promise you that.
I like cheese.
I like hard cheeses, I like soft cheeses.
This isn't hard cheese or a soft cheese.
It's a wet cheese, and that's not good.
That's just, it's got this texture for eating
that is just wet.
Like, the inclusion of the espresso martini
has made the texture very bad.
The coffee taste, some might say thankfully,
really pretty minimal.
It's still mostly cheese.
It doesn't do like a horrible coffee finish.
The biggest betrayal here, in a way,
is the inclusion on the packet
of the words butterscotch crisp pieces,
because there are no crisp pieces here.
There are wet butterscotch pieces
that are just sort of a slight soggy textural variation
on the wet cheese.
That is about as appealing as it sounds.
It's a weird decision to include something
that is that damp-tasting, I guess.
Nothing here is good.
The acidity of the cheese is like a medium-ish.
Like, it's got some acidity.
The sweetness isn't particularly overpowering,
considering how much sugar's in there,
I guess, 'cause it's still cold.
But the flavor, I don't get it.
I don't really get what they're going for here.
I'm gonna have one more piece.
It mostly tastes of cheese,
not particular interesting cheese, to be honest.
And then it has this sort of dirtiness with it.
You wouldn't tell that it's about 1% alcohol, unsurprisingly
I don't think this exists for any reason
other than to get idiots like me to taste it
and talk about it, to get newspapers to write about it,
to get people in store.
Why would you make that?
I mean, I like to think I've answered why.
All right, Aldi.
You know, weirdly, I feel like you win
just from me doing this.
I feel like you win.
I have been played. You win this round.
I really don't like it and I wouldn't recommend you buy it.
And I wouldn't even recommend you buy it
as a kind of novelty gift to be like,
"Tee-hee, isn't this disgusting?
Let's all hang out and eat it,"
unless you enjoy unpleasant textural experiences
as much as unpleasant flavor experiences.
'Cause the wetness of the cheese
is really hard to get over for me.
Like, it eats in a kind of really claggy,
damp, unpleasant way.
You know, I just, no. No.
Who thinks coffee and cheese is a thing?
I'm genuinely curious.
I know it exists in certain Scandinavian countries,
but really, coffee and cheese,
I'm not, I'm just, I'm not sure I'm here for it.
Let me know if I'm wrong. Let me know if I'm wrong.
If you have a strong coffee and cheese opinion,
I want to hear from you down in the comments below.
If you have been sucked into trying this like me, you know,
commiserate with me in the comments down below, too.
If you work at Aldi and you worked
on this product, well done.
You know, not 'cause it tastes good,
but because it's just ridiculous
and you managed to make people buy it and eat it
and I think that's kind of hilarious.
All right, I'm done. I'm done.
Simple rating: it is a wet, slightly dirty-tasting cheese
of questionable origin.
I know it's Wensleydale. It doesn't taste like Wensleydale.
And I feel like if you gave this to Wallace,
he would be very upset by what you'd done
to the cheese, too, so think about that.
- It's like no cheese I've ever tasted.
- All right, that's it.
Thank you so much for watching.
I hope you have a great day.