by Austin Coe Butler
While we continue to celebrate the many exciting holiday cheeses and pairings we will have for the next month, we thought we would take a moment to celebrate another seasonal cheese that reminds us of the long, light days of summer, and how green our world can be: Gruyère Alpage.
Gruyère Alpage takes its name from two very important places. The first is Gruyère, of course, a region that has now, in our administrative age, been strictly demarcated to a small region of Switzerland. But Gruyère itself takes its name from a people and moment in time. Back in the 13th century, yes, that far back, when Charlemagne was Holy Roman Emperor, he founded a corps of officiers gruyers to manage his forests, or gruyeries as they were called then. Cheesemakers in the region had to buy their fuel from these foresters to heat their milk and make cheese and, then as now, cheesemaking was not lucrative work, so a trade was agreed upon: fuel for cheese. This is how a name is attached to a place.
And now for the Alpage. In many places where arable land is too scarce and precious to graze livestock on, shepherds have to take their herds up the mountain and from mid-May to mid-October they graze their cows in these Alpine meadows, these alpages, These alpages, are the result of glacial erosion, but they are also the result of clearing by gruyers, who, by chopping down impenetrable, evergreen pines and spruce allowed the sun to stream in and foster wildflowers and grasses to dominate.
The centuries old tradition of pastoral transhumance, taking animals to and from pasturage seasonally, is one of the most remarkable celebrations of all those things entwined in cheese: the people, the animals, the places, the flavors, traditions, and cultures. When the cows descend from the mountains, often crowned with elaborate arrangements of spruce branches spangled with marigolds, sunflowers, and ribbons, hundreds gather to watch. The sound of their bells rings through the valley, echoing off the Alpine mountainsides, is stirring. When I first saw the tranzhumanza in Piedmont (or Désalpes in French / Alpabzug in Swiss-German), I was standing next to a German woman who whispered to herself again and again in wonderment, “Unglaublich, unglaublich….”—unbelievable, incredible, indescribable.
Our Gruyère Alpage is made by the Mauron family at Guedères north of Montreaux at over 4,000 feet. They still make Gruyère Alpage the way it has been for centuries. They still heat the milk in massive copper cauldrons over burning lumber. They still cut and strain the scalded curd through linens and into wooden forms to be tightened under presses twisted by hand. Their cows still look fabulous coming down the mountain during the Alpabzug.
Wheres our Gruyère 1655 tends to be more savory, beef brothy, and evocative of French onion soup that a broiled, blistered crown of Gruyère always sits atop, Gruyère Alpage is fruitier, more herbaceous, floral, and grassy. What immediately strikes you is the aroma of this cheese, which is reminiscent of juicy pears, sweet apples, and ripe Alpine strawberries. The initial fruity acidity gives way to bold, grassy waves of salt as you reach that allium savoriness and barnyard funkiness towards the rind. Gruyère Alpage reminds me of the best Comtés: bright, fruity, nutty, complex enough to find a kaleidoscopic array of flavors inside it.