A New Look at Swiss Cheeses

cheese focus

The latest generation of artisan cheeses from Switzerland, particularly traditional alpines, offer a variety of taste experiences and promising sales opportunities.

Even cheese-counter regulars who spend freely on French and Italian cheeses often underestimate (and under-buy) Swiss cheese. In recent years, the range of Swiss cheeses available to American shoppers has broadened dramatically. And to describe many of them as sublime is no overstatement. In Max McCalman’s discriminating book, Cheese: A Connoisseur’s Guide to the World’s Best, Swiss cheeses outnumber the selections from every European country but France. “The variety is much bigger than what people expect,” notes McCalman of Swiss cheesemaking.

Upselling: Think Alpage
While most retailers feel compelled to offer a modestly priced Gruyère and Emmental for customers’ everyday needs, the potential to upsell is huge. Stocking an extra-aged Appenzeller or the exquisite Hoch Ybrig or Napfkäse from Swiss affineur Rolf Beeler will help to satisfy your customers’ quest for select cheeses.

To experience the best Switzerland has to offer, keep an eye out for the word alpage (alpine). This French term applies only to cheeses made in an alp, or small mountain chalet, during the cows’ annual trek from the valley floor into the mountains.

“Not every mountain cheese is an alpine cheese,” says Caroline Hostettler, the Ft. Meyers, Fla.-based importer of the Rolf Beeler line as well as her own line of fine Swiss cheeses. “The farmers who make cheese in the alps are always the small ones, never the ones with hundreds of cows.”

At the most, estimates Hostettler, only 15 percent of Swiss production is alpage, and “those cheeses are really, really precious.”

Making Alpine Cheese
The annual movement of livestock into mountain pasture, a phenomenon known as transhumance, begins around mid-May with great fanfare. The whole village takes off work on the designated day of departure and kids stay home from school to bid adieu to the cows and their owners. Villagers festoon the cows with flowers and bells, and the youngsters dress up in traditional costumes. “It’s a big moment,” says Hostettler, who is Swiss. “For some families, they are separating for the whole season.” 

Typically, she continues, the shepherd will own an alp partway up the mountain, a primitive one-room shelter with little more than a bed, a small kitchen area and a fireplace with a copper cauldron for cheesemaking. “Everything smells of smoke and milk, and you feel like you’ve gone back 300 years,” says Hostettler.

The young wheels go into a basement to age. By the end of June, when the weather warms, it will be time to move the herd further up the mountain and the shepherd will take shelter in another alp. Grazing and cheesemaking will continue at this high elevation until perhaps mid-September.

Because these cheeses need to last until they are brought down the mountain, they are invariably large-format, pressed-curd, washed-rind wheels, such as Appenzeller, Gruyère, Vacherin Fribourgeois and Sbrinz. The cows’ rich pasture diet gives these summer-made mountain wheels exceptional flavor. They are more golden in color, more tender and creamy, and show more depth than cheeses made with winter milk, says Hostettler.

Revitalization of Artisan Cheeses
Beeler, the celebrated Swiss affineur, has been instrumental in nurturing artisan cheesemaking in his country by seeking out vanishing products like raw-milk Appenzeller and Raclette and small-production Sbrinz. His high-priced selections “are for people who want to take it to the next level,” says Shelli Morton, a sales representative with Crystal Food Imports in Lynn, Mass., the exclusive distributor of the Beeler line. “The minute you taste them, people get over any price humps.”

Mary Richter, store manager for Surdyk’s Liquor Store and Gourmet Cheese Shop, in Minneapolis, says customers look to her cheese counter for new tastes and have snapped up obscure Swiss cheeses, like the pungent, creamy Försterkäse; Jersey Blue from cheesemaker Willi Schmid; and Beeler’s Napfkäse.

Last year, Atlanta-based cheese importer Larry Lukas began bringing in a line of artisan Swiss cheeses that has surpassed his sales expectations. Some are soft-ripened cheeses with unfamiliar names like Selun and Senne-flada, made by a single family. Others, such as a 17-month-old Gruyère from a producer who makes three wheels a day, are obvious rarities. Consolidation in the Swiss cheese industry, which put many small Emmental makers out of work, has paradoxically led to a revitalization in artisan cheesemaking.

“Many of the greatest cheesemakers in the world started making new cheeses or some real old recipes,” says Lukas. “They had the milk and needed to start producing something other than Emmental.”

For retailers whose customers seek novelty, recognize quality and are willing to pay for it, these treasures from Switzerland could be star performers. “Show people new opportunities,” urges Lukas. Your customers may be slashing their dining-out budget, “but they are treating themselves to something special at home.” |SFM|

Janet Fletcher is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle and author of The Cheese Course.

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