(ENG) The Good Taste of Gruyère

junho, 2007

Cheese creates disagreement between Swiss and French

The red pan appeared under ovations. “It’s very hot,” alerted the owner of the chalet, careful that no one would be burned by touching the recipient. Inside, a mass of melted cheese produced a delicious aroma. As the recipe of the fondue includes white wine and I was a just a seven years old kid, I could only taste two tiny pieces of bread bathed in that magic mixture. It was during this childhood dinner in the Alps that I heard the word “Gruyère” for the first time. Since that night, there have been cheeses – many cheeses – but only one was sovereign: Gruyère.

The ancestor of Gruyère is probably 900 years old. The first mention of its preparation in the region is dated 1115, when William, the first Count of Gruyères (the name of the village has an “s” at the end), founded a monastery in Rougemont, to support the peasants in the fabrication of the local product.

But why did they want to prepare cheese? During a time when there were no refrigerators, conservatives and tetrapaks, how else could the European extend the lifetime of such a rich and nutritive food as milk? Fruits are to preserves, as milk is to cheese. It was created as a way to avoid wasting proteins and minerals. The “invention” of Gruyère must have happened by chance. When milk was placed in a bag made of the stomach of a calf, it curdled and gave birth to a delicious new industry.

With his traditional pink cheeks, Joseph Doutaz, seems to be much younger than 79 years old. Strong and well put, he learned how to produce this divine food in 1944, when he was just 16 years old. He had spent the summer in a mountain chalet, helping his father with the herd. Isolated in the Alps and without being able to sell milk daily, they produced dozens of Gruyère cheese called Alpage.

He revealed some of his secrets. “To produce a good cheese, I need milk of excellent quality, without any impurity. The cows have to be well fed – 250 pounds of grass a day – and drink 25 gallons of water,” explained Joseph. “Well fed, each individual can produce some 6 gallons of milk daily”.

When fermented, curdled, cut and heated to a temperature of 56 C degrees, each batch of three gallons of milk is transformed into two pounds of Gruyère. “It is the cheese itself that decides when it is ready. The cheese maker needs to know how to listen,” confessed Joseph, who is always very attentive to each step of the preparation. “We can loose hundreds of gallons of milk for just an instant of distraction.”

The process of fabrication of cheese in the House of Gruyère is modern and impeccable.

Four cauldrons made of copper, each one holding 4,800 liters (1,300 gallons), generate 48 round cheeses that can be called Gruyère. Each one of them weighs 77 pounds. The cheeses spend their first three months in a cave at 14 C of temperature. The cave of the House of Gruyère can hold up to 7,000 of those that are maintained by a robot. The machine removes the cheese, bathes the outside crust with slated water and returns it to its shelf.

Joseph Doutaz insisted that I entered the cave with him. When he opened the door, an acid smell – similar do a mixture of ammonia and curdle – penetrated my nostrils. He laughed of my reaction and went straight to the shelves were the cheeses complete the period of maturity. “A Gruyère is only worth its name when it spends at least five months in the process of maturation,” clarified the cheese maker. When it is over a year old, its taste is stronger.”

We found in the shelves dozens of Alpage Gruyère. “It is produced in the mountains. There are still chalets with remote access, which can only be reached by foot. During the summer when the herd stays in these high pastures, we milk the cows and produce the cheese right there,” revealed Joseph. The milk has another flavor, because the cows consume a great amount of flowers and herbs. The perfume of violets, chestnuts or lilies penetrates the product.”

The process of preparation is a real craft and follows precise rules so that a cheese can be labeled Alpage. For example, there cannot be any use of herbicides and fertilizers. The milk is heated in wood stoves so that the smell of smoke can permeate the mixture giving it a soft smoked flavor. As each round cheese needs to be transported by foot, they cannot be as large as the 77 pounds one. “They generally are smaller and weigh some 45 pounds. We use a bird to transport them to the next village,” explained Joseph.

A bird? I immediately imagined some trained eagle, holding the large cheese in its talons flying through the alpine skies. Joseph noticed my reaction – and my ignorance. “The bird is a special wooden box, mounted over the shoulders. It includes a round platform that holds the cheeses. When I was young I could walk down the mountain with a stack of four.”

As we left the cave, we went directly to the shop of the House of Gruyère. I was delighted to be invited to taste pieces of different cheeses, old and young. They were all delicious, but when I tasted the Alpage, I felt in heaven. I closed my eyes and could feel the wild flowers and the delicate smoky taste from inside the chalet. Certainly, if I had continued eating some more of this delicacy, I would have started hearing the sound of the bells of the cows.

In Switzerland to use a label with the name Gruyère, there is a very meticulous and incorruptible process of points. The organization responsible for this process is the Interprofession du Gruyère (IPG) and Jean-Louis Audrey is the Master Cheese Maker. As a renowned producer, he evaluates a sample (10%) of all the Swiss production of Gruyère. “I already tasted more than a million cheeses during all these years. It is a task of responsibility as we have to decide, following four criteria, which cheese will be able to be sold to the consumer and which will be rejected,” commented Jean-Louis.

Using his five senses, Jean-Louis checks cheese monthly when they reach the age of four and a half months, or two weeks before they start hitting the stores. He uses his audition, because the cheese is beaten with a small hammer to reveal the existence of internal cavities; his touch when he extracts a sample and rubs the cheese between his fingers; his vision, as he observes the crust and the color of the inside which has to be perfectly homogenous; his sense of smell to perceive the aroma, and, finally, his palate to experience the taste.

“A cheese without defects gets 20 points. Only 3% to 5% of all production reaches this mark. After that, small irregularities will rest half a point or a whole point,” explained the master. “To be sold in stores it needs to score 18 points – we only accept minimum irregularities that cannot be perceived by the consumer.”

And what about holes? Does the Gruyère come with holes? Jean-Louis was very loud and clear: “Cheeses with small fissures, even if small, are disqualified. To be authentic, the cheese cannot present any kind of opening.” This means that Swiss Gruyère does not have any hole!

But the French Gruyère does… The confusion is that, on the other side of the border, the French cheese makers produce, using a very similar method, other cheeses made with cooked milk, like the Comté and the French Emmental. And they give these cheeses (with holes that vary in size - from a pea to a nut) the generic name of Gruyère.

To avoid this ambiguity and maintain authenticity, the Swiss obtained in 2001 for their Gruyère a certificate AOC (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée), which establishes that only cheese produced in specific geographical areas and following precise procedures can be baptized this way. “But our Gruyère AOC is only recognized in Switzerland,” confessed Jean-François Bielmann, Marketing Director for IPG.

In 2007, the situation worsened: the Swiss were not able to stop the French and these managed to obtain, this March, a national AOC for their French Gruyère – the one with the holes, of course…

Enchanted by the Swiss cheese, but the son of a French mother, when I realized that the discussion was becoming touchy, I preferred to forget the political divergences and move on to taste more of this delicacy. To burn some calories beforehand, I walked up the one mile road from the House of Gruyère to the village.

Gruyères is a medieval village still walled up, divided by a unique street, with a dozen of houses on both sides. The castle, built during the 11th century, is located at the end of the road. I took advantage of the evening light to walk around the fortress and visit its elegant gardens.

To celebrate the beautiful spring days, I decided at night to eat a cheese fondue. I sat at the table of one of the restaurants of Gruyères and, as I was dipping my chunks of bread in the delicious magical mixture, I let time go by. I was so concentrated in my little ritual that the noise of the other clients seemed more and more distant as I was savoring my fondue.

Finally, I did not resist and ordered another portion of the dish. The bread filled with the delicate elixir touched my palate. With a smile, I closed my eyes and chewed very slowly, and, as if coming straight from the mountains, I could hear the bells of the cows.

PERFECT CHEESE RECEIVES BONUS

The Interprofession du Gruyère (IPG) uses four criteria to evaluate its cheese: absence of orifices, mass and texture, flavor and odor and external appearance.

A perfect cheese scores 20 points. To bring more incentive to reach excellence in the production, IPG offers a bonus of 27 Swiss Franc cents (some US$0.21cents) for each kilo of Gruyère that reached the maximum score.

More than half of the production earns 19 or more points. Every cheese with more than 18 points can be sold cut.

If a lot obtains between 17.5 and 16.5, the cheese can be used in fondues or grated. With 16 points or less, the cheeses lose the right to be named “Gruyère” and are only used in mixed preparations or to feed the pigs.

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