It’s 9:30 a.m., and my abdomen is already growling as I hike alongside a slim ridge within the Swiss Alps. To my left, clusters of untamed herbs and ripe berries glint within the August solar. To my proper, the valleys of Gstaad-Saanenland, as soon as described by Julie Andrews as “the last paradise in a crazy world,” stay seemingly untouched by time. I’m within the Bernese Oberland area, however to not forage or just admire the view. I’ve come to expertise Switzerland’s cheese trails, a group of a whole bunch of mountain paths inside the nation’s 40,000-mile path community main vacationers to conventional alpine dairies.
The clang of cowbells within the distance tells me I’m shut. Then, I spot it: a wood chalet tucked into the hillside of Alp Gfell. Outside, a self-serve fridge permits hungry hikers to buy cheese and sausages utilizing an honor-system piggy financial institution. The most coveted wedges are alpkäse, a conventional Swiss cheese made completely in summer time at high-altitude dairies, utilizing milk from cows that graze on alpine pastures. The result’s a nutty, herbaceous, arduous cheese with a touch of butterscotch.
“Grüezi!” beams Michael Schläppi, a third-generation cheesemaker who greets me in Swiss-German. Even higher than help-yourself kas is the truth that, alongside the cheese trails, there are ample alternatives to satisfy the farmers retaining these centuries-old traditions alive. Schläppi invitations me in to satisfy his 36 cows—every of whom he is aware of by identify. His favourite, Tania, is now not round; she was 18 when she handed away in 2023, however not earlier than introducing Schläppi to his girlfriend: Katja, a veterinarian. Now the couple spends round 100 days per yr at 6,000 toes on the verdant slope, making alpine cheese in a tiny workshop till early September, when the cows descend to greener pastures under. “It’s not me who decides when the cows go down into the valley—it’s the grass,” Schläppi says, as he heats milk in a copper cauldron over an open hearth.
Like the well-trodden paths resulting in chalets, custom and nature dictate how every cheesemaking season unfolds. Guests who time their go to to the Gstaad Züglete, a cow parade competition in early September, may share the path with flower-crowned cattle sporting handcrafted bells. Every cheesemaker’s batch tastes barely completely different relying on the wildflowers of their meadows. Come winter, many, together with Schläppi, swap cheesemaking for ski instructing.
After watching Schläppi separate the whey and press the curds into wheels, which might be aged for at the very least 18 months, we step outdoors so I can pattern a collection of his most interesting cheeses. My favorites are the fragile rolls of Bernese Hobelkäse, an extra-hard alpine rendition that’s spicy, tangy, and as aromatic because the meadows round us. With a cup of espresso, full with a splash of farm-fresh milk and a view over the valley, it’s the right mid-hike breakfast.
The route I’m on—which travels from the Horneggli Mountain cable car station to the Gfell slope and again—is a reasonable three-mile loop, however cheese trails throughout Switzerland vary from brief and candy self-guided journeys like this, to multi-day treks like these on the Via Le Gruyère path community that begins close to Lake Geneva.