Typed with Greasy Fingers: The Story of "Sommer Butter"

No, that’s not a typo. This morning, the first of our two-week stay in Vienna, Austria, I went shopping to stock the kitchen at our Herminengasse roof-top apartment. Even though I’ve done the gig three years in a row (we rented the apartment for 10 days last year, 3 weeks the year before), I was still pretty flummoxed by the supermarket experience.

I could have read a couple chapters of War and Peace in the time it took to read the labels of the two dozen milks in the case. (I found no differences other than fat content, but clearly the consumers have their preferences.) Then came the butter parade. Austrian butter. Scandinavian butter. Yogurt butter. Sour Cream Butter. Half-fat Butter. Make-believe butter. And Sommer Butter.

Who knew?

Turns out that summer butter is, indeed, different from winter butter (except in places like Australia, New Zealand and California where the cows graze outdoors all year long). The one I tried, from Schärdinger, the country’s largest farmers’ dairy coop, was deliciously creamy, sweet smelling, with a subtle tang that lingered on the tongue. I schmeared some on a pumpkin seed-studded roll that I picked up at the neighborhood bakery after a morning walk along the Danube. The flavor was so satisfying that I needed just one small roll to crank me up for a day of sightseeing.

 

Since cows eat fresh grass and herbs (containing carotene and chlorophyll) in the summer, the butter has more color and increased nutrients. (In winter, cows eat dried hay.) Of course, the  commercial butters in the U.S. marketplace have carotene, coloring and other things added to produce a uniform product year round.

 

Maybe it’s just the fact that I’m sitting here, a stone’s throw from Sound-of-Music-land where cows with clunker bells around their necks wander the hillsides at will…maybe that’s why this butter tastes better. But maybe, just maybe, it’s because it’s pure butter, no additives, in season, locally produced, from free-wheeling cows. Something to think about every time we reach for one of the processed foods that are fueling the world's obesity epidemic. (This evocative photo is from a Web site, Animal Pictures For Kids that sells very cool wallpaper.)