Swiss cheese

Switzerland makes something over 450 varieties of cheese, and produces around 190,000 tonnes a year from milk that mostly comes from cows that spent the summer above the treeline.

That is the whole logic of it: milk does not keep and cheese does, so the summer surplus of a high pasture was turned into wheels that could be carried down and sold in winter. Everything else — the alp huts, the herds moving up in June and down in September, the enormous wheel sizes — follows from that.

The ones to know

Gruyère AOP — hard, dense, nutty, made in the Fribourg region since at least 1115. Aged from five months to eighteen or more, and the difference between the two is worth tasting side by side.

And it has no holes. The cheese with holes is Emmentaler. This confusion is universal outside Switzerland and instantly corrected inside it.

Emmentaler AOP — from the Emme valley near Bern, mild, and made in wheels of up to 100 kg. The holes are carbon dioxide released by bacteria during ripening, which forms bubbles in the elastic paste. Modern hygiene has made them smaller: the traditional large holes came partly from tiny particles of hay in the milk, and cleaner milking has reduced them.

Appenzeller — washed during ripening in a herbal brine whose recipe is genuinely secret, held by a handful of people. Strong, and the strength is graded by the colour of the label.

Sbrinz AOP — the hardest, aged at least eighteen months and often much longer, shaved rather than sliced. Probably the oldest Swiss cheese; there are arguments that the Romans knew it.

Tête de Moine AOP — from the Jura, and not cut but shaved into rosettes with a rotating blade called a girolle. That is not decoration: the thin ruffled shavings expose far more surface and the cheese tastes noticeably different from a cut slice of the same wheel.

Vacherin Fribourgeois — semi-soft, and the other half of a proper moitié-moitié fondue.

Vacherin Mont-d’Or AOP — a winter cheese, soft, in a spruce box, made only between August and March. Baked in its box with garlic and white wine and eaten with a spoon and potatoes. If you are here in winter, this is the one.

Raclette du Valais AOP — made to be melted, and to be scraped from the cut face of a half wheel onto potatoes with pickles.

Fondue

Melted cheese and dry white wine, with a little cornflour and kirsch, eaten with bread on long forks.

The proportions are the argument. Moitié-moitié — half Gruyère, half Vacherin Fribourgeois — is the Fribourg version and the one most Swiss consider correct. Other regions use their own blends and are equally certain.

Two rules that are taken seriously: do not drink cold water with it, and whoever loses their bread in the pot buys the next round. The first is folklore rather than physiology; nobody cares, and you should still not do it.

Buying and bringing home

Supermarkets — Coop and Migros carry the full range at reasonable prices, vacuum-packed for travel. This is where locals buy cheese, and a souvenir shop will charge you three times as much for the same wheel.

Show dairies — Gruyères, Emmental, Appenzell and Engelberg all have visitor galleries over the vats, with production runs in the morning.

Alp huts — the real thing, above the treeline, where a family makes cheese every morning through the summer. Reached on foot.

Check your own country’s import rules before loading up, and note that the Swiss customs allowance applies coming back in.

The cattle come down

Alpabzug in September: the herds return from the summer pasture, the lead cows in flower headdresses and heavy bells, through villages that turn out to watch. Appenzell, the Emmental, Charmey and the Entlebuch hold the largest.

Free, entirely genuine, and among the better things to see in Switzerland. Dates depend on the grass and are published by the tourist offices.