A cheesy road trip

Saturday turned out to be a lovely day with blue skies and bright sunshine. Ah so very nice to get some sun after a pretty grey week. We decided on a road trip up into the mountains. Switzerland sure has plenty of that. My new favorite webpage is My Switzerland where you can find lots of information and inspiration for things to do and see. Another great thing is that Switzerland is a pretty small country so going to one place or another is never far (not compared to the distances you encounter in the US). The destination of this weekend was set for the cheese factory in Emmentaler.

 The surroundings as we drove up the mountains and towards the Emmentaler village where just stunning! Looked like a pretty winter postcard with small villages scattered across the snowy hills, curvy small roads running up and down the mountains, blue skies, smoke slowly rising from the chimneys. Emmentaler cheese is named after the Emme valley in the Swiss canton of Berne.

 

You can visit the factory and see how the cheese is made here in the Schaukäseri. The making of cheese can be traced back to twelfth century. 

 It takes 12 liters of milk to make 1 Kg of Emmentaler.There are strict guidelines and quality checks for the making of each cheese. Only fresh milk from the region is to be used. The milk comes from cows which feed only naturally on fresh grass of these mountain slopes.

Here you could watch the process as they were making Emmentaler. The milk is poured into these large tanks and then carefully each step has to be followed. From each tank you get four wheels of cheese.

Each wheel of cheese has to mature for at least 120 days by completely natural methods in a cheese cellar. This is considerably longer than most other cheeses. Each of these large wheels of cheese weighs 100 Kg. Of course there is not just one kind of Emmentaler. There is the classic, the extra, the Reserve, the Cave-aged and so on. They are aged from four to more than 12 months.

 In the shop you could buy not just Emmentaler cheese but all kinds of Swiss cheese. The diversity of cheese in this country is just enormous. We had Racelette last Sunday and there is a special cheese for this. The Raclette chese is cut in quite wide chunks and melted, eaten with potatoes and slices of other vegetables.

 Raclette and Fondue are the two big national cheese specialties here. In the shop you could also buy many different kinds of fondue pots.

 We had a cup of coffee and a ham and cheese sandwich with Emmentaler cheese of course in the restaurant.

 The little village also had a number of these beautiful houses with their characteristic balconies and roofs.

 So breath taking to look out over the snowy hills and mountains with the houses and small villages on the slopes and in the valleys. Picture perfect postcard views.

 Again driving past and a long the Jura mountains.

 Many of the villages have these very old beautiful houses. I feel like I have stepped right into the world of Hedi.

 When we came home we enjoyed a snack with the Emmentaler we bought and a glass of wine as dinner was getting ready. This was the best Emmentaler I have had so far.