The mountain path

 We start at the valley bottom very early in the morning. The weather forecast is great and although there is no indication yet of the rising sun, the mountains are starting to appear as the darkness disappears. After a strenuous passage through a dense pine forest, we continue up a rocky path that has never seen a car or truck before.

These alpine trails are only for hikers or one or two wild alpine farmers riding motor bikes, which have been specifically adjusted for crazy and steep paths. Up in these high alpine areas, one either walks, or if available, transports goods by aerial ropeway or even by helicopter.

After a while, we reach a level where pine trees do not grow due to the altitude. We can smell the fresh green grass while hiking up a steep hill. As the sun starts to rise, more and more cow bells can be heard everywhere.

Arriving at the hut, the alpine farmer, who is also the cheesemaker, offers us some rustic bread, a coffee and some hobelkaese* – a hard grating alpine cheese. What a combination! We also had some beer with the hobelkaese but thought a chilled German riesling would really taste good with it. Everything in the hut smells like fire (the fire they use to heat up the milk). *Shaved cheese.

The cheese making

In June, the farmer walks up to the hut and spends all summer there, so the cows can feed on the delicious alpine grass on the steep slopes. Every day, the farmer and his son milk their few cows and turn the milk into two alpine cheeses of about eight kilograms.

After milking the cows in the early morning hours, the cheese maker heats up the milk to only 28 degrees, then adds fresh cultures and later on rennet at 31 degrees. He cuts the cheese by hand and then slowly heats it to about 46 degrees before taking it out of the small vat by hand with a cloth. (See actual process here.)

 Just cutting, collecting, chopping and carrying the firewood to the alpine fromagerie is a lot of work. All milk is heated on a small in-house fire, and the smell of the whole hut, all the clothes and even the fresh cheese reflects that.

Once the cheese is taken out of the vat, the cheesemaker puts it into a small “Jaerb” (a basic Swiss alpine style hoop), and then presses it by hand before subjecting it to a simple pressure mechanism – the main weight is a hanging stone! After 24 hours of drainage on the press, he puts the cheese in a salt brine before maturation.

 The production in a lot of alpine factories is often so small, that most of the cheese is eaten by hikers or by the cheesemaker. If you tasted this in the hut, you would understand immediately. Any cheeses left at the end of September, are carried into the valley by aerial ropeway. What an effort for 16 kilograms of cheese per day, made with passion!

 Hard cheese

 The remote position of most alpine huts is one reason why Switzerland has a strong tradition in making hard cheese. Because cheese could not be transported immediately after production, the cheesemakers had to focus on cheese that had a long shelf life and could survive the tough journey down into the valleys.

 Visiting Alpine cheesemakers, I am always impressed and feel very passionate about what they do! And while visiting, always eat a bit more cheese than normally…

First off, Christian pasteurised the milk and, when it had cooled sufficiently, added prepared cultures. These cultures would help determine the type of cheese produced – this batch would end up as a tilsit style.
After the cultures started working, he added a non-animal coagulant that turned the vat of milk into what I can best describe as a 1.5 tonne junket. He then used a giant steel whisk to chop the junket into a texture that I thought resembled pale scrambled eggs. At this stage you could see the liquid whey start to separate from the soft curds.
We then pumped the curds and whey into another tank. As the whey drained off, we scooped measured buckets of curd into cylindrical, perforated, stainless steel moulds. With a cunningly designed hydraulic machine, Christian lowered pistons into the tops of the moulds and pressed the new cheese to the desired degree of firmness.
At this stage, my role as assistant cheesemaker was over and I asked Christian what would happen next.
‘I’m now going to put the new cheese onto untreated pine planks in the maturation room,’ he said. ‘Until it’s sold it will be kept quite cool in an atmosphere of steady humidity. Every day for the next two weeks I’ll turn and smear the fresh cheese with a salty brine solution, until it builds a proper rind. The Tilsit will take about two months before it’s mature enough for consumption.’
He added that from the 1500 litres of milk we’d used he expected to make approximately 150 kilograms of cheese.
I’ve condensed the above procedures timewise but it was actually a day long process. The work was hot and sweaty and I ended up smelling definitely cheesy. I was glad to get home for a shower and a beer. Followed, of course, by a plate of mature tilsit and a bottle of Coonawarra cabernet.

‘Then down to Mugaritz, a gorgeous restaurant rated in the world top 10. A highlight dish was six tiny gnocchi, about the texture of egg yolk made from a sheep milk cheese, semi-liquid in a semi-opaque membrane, sitting in a consommé so perfect, clear and wonderfully seasoned. Like the Japanese say “a little bit too much: a little bit not enough”. Each gnoccho had a tiny frond of a different herb, cut from the forest around the restaurant, each one had a different flavour of course, delicate in the extreme.
‘Then off to Lyon for the Caseus Awards 2009. We did pretty well considering we hadn’t ever tasted or in fact seen many of the cheeses before, but just the same, came in ninth ahead of Belgium, Spain and Italy.
‘Spent a night at the amazing Hotel Cour des Loges, in Lyon, with a concierge that is so cool (like the guy in Pretty Woman, only real). We got on famously since he has a ‘69 Triumph. Then spent the night in the bar after closing time, big night, huge night actually. All the best mate, Richard.’