LA
MAISON DU GRUYÈRE
Gruyères Cheese Dairy Factory Tour
You
may find cheeses inthe market labeled Gruyere, and I've seen it incorrectly
referred to a French cheese, but the real stuff
only comes
from the mountain dales of the central part
of French speaking Switzerland, between Bern and Lake Geneva, in the
cantons of Fribourg, the Vaud, Neuchâtel and the Jura. Gruyere
cheese, while being Swiss, is not
the one with
the holes (well, sometimes small ones), but that nutty flavored cream-colored
cheese used in fondue (combined with Vacherin), 
sliced, or melted atop
bread. This
delicious cheese has been produced for centuries around the medieval
town of Gruyères, from where the product gets its
name. (The town has an s, the cheese doesn't.) The producers
of Gruyere cheese joined together and opened
the Maison du Gruyère demonstration factory in 2000, now one
of the most popular tourist sites in the area, usually combined with
the Gruyere
Castle and the nearby Nestle-Cailler
Chocolate Factory, as a feature the popular scenic Chocolate
Train, with the Maison
du Gruyere cheese dairy visitor center located just next to the rail
station
of
Gruyères.
Your tour
guide at the Maison du Gruyère is a cow named Cherry.
You don’t actually see the talking cow, except in a few smiling
pictures, as she tells you the story of Gruyere Cheese through audio
guide headphones.
The self-guided
tour
starts
with the sounds of the high pastures, streams and cow bells, with
exhibits of the aromas of the herbs and grasses of the Alpine meadows
which make up Cheery’s diet. Since the flavor of cheese comes much
from the flavors of the milk (75 different scents detected by scientists),
Cherry the cow talks a good deal about her eating habits. After a chance
to smell the aromas of various flowers and natural flavorings of the
Swiss cow's favorite
meals, the tour moves upstairs to the production viewing area. 
The milk
is delivered
twice a day from over 300
area
milk
producers
and mixed in great stirring vats with the unique and secret formula cheese
culture, then after curing has begun is poured into forms and pressed
into wheel rounds, turned by machine. This process is viewed from above
through windows on the
viewing
floor,
as a
movie on
TV monitors show and explain the process. If you come
when the work is done for the day, the movie will have to suffice. The
35 kg cheese rounds are soaked in salt baths to form the
rind then
taken to the maturing cellars, where the last part of the tour is a look
through glass into the cellar where the cheese rounds are stored for
4 months to 15 months, for different qualities of aging.
The Maison
du Gruyère visitor center tour concludes with a visit
to the on-site store where the cheeses and other products are available
for sale, in case the little packet of sample Gruyere Cheese presented
with the tour isn’t enough to satisfy your tantalized taste buds.
Or take a table at the Le Fromagerie Restaurant for a real fondue lunch,
with a view of the mountains beyond the outdoor terrace.
Visiting the Maison du Gruyère Tour
The Gruyère
Cheese Dairy (they prefer dairy to factory) is open daily from 9am
to 7pm. The tour takes about 30 to 45 minutes. The actual
cheese making happens from 9am to 11am and from 12:30 to 2:30pm. Admission
for adults is 7 CHF, Students and Seniors 6 CHF with a Family Ticket
for 12 CHF (2 adults + children up to 12). Group packages are available
which includes a dish in the restaurant as well as the tour visit. © Bargain
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