In the Swiss Alps, Gruyère Cheese Is a Way of Life

Cheese master Jean-Charles Michaud tests wheels with his sonde, a cowhorn hammer with a corer for a handle. He taps one, listening to its music. If it sounds hollow, there’s a hole. No good. He tastes. If not perfect, the cheese will be relegated to products other than fresh-cut wheels. There’s a heck of a lot of Gruyère to vouch for; Mifroma ripens nearly 10,000 tons a year. A worker walks by in rappelling gear.

Yet, not all affineurs are of such a size. A farmer, cheesemaker, and affineur at once, Martial Rod is the proprietor of La Moësettaz, an alpage, or mountain pasture, in Le Brassus. The tiny, family operation is the opposite of Mifroma’s. The 57 traditional alpages like Rod’s produce less than 2 percent of the AOP cheese, but their craft is the most impressive. At the chalet where he lives and works, commemorative cowbells dangle from the eaves. Rod stirs a vat of curds and whey heated by glowing embers. It is frigid outside, but the fire overheats the tiny fromagerie. Beneath his leather apron, Rod wears a tank top. His arms are ripped from lifting 77-pound wheels.

“My father was a cheesemaker,” Rod says. “I, too, fell into the vat. I like my relationship with the animals and the work’s respect for nature.” He knows each of his 50 cows by name, and he controls the entire process. “The alpage is the definition of freedom.”

On a forest-lined meadow in the drizzle and fog, Rod’s cows luxuriate, their udders conjuring the milk that he will turn into the cheese that will eventually be melted into dishes like moitié-moitié, a winey fondue combining pungent Gruyère with a milder cheese, Vacherin, at rustic Swiss Alpine eateries, including Chez Boudji, a specialist of this dish in the town of Broc.

The bovines chew their cud nonchalantly. In a month or so, Rod will dress them in floral crowns and join other farmers in the désalpe, parading the herds from alpine pastures, down to the warmer plains for winter, as chalets on Moléson and across the region prep their fondue pots for the aprés-ski crowds.