Finally, the day that we had been looking forward to most arrived, a chance to feast on cheese and chocolate at the factories in the heart of Switzerland.
Breakfast was described as “hearty” on the hotel website, what they omitted to mention was that it included the specialities of the region Guyere cheese and meringue. In the interest of research, we had to sample the various aged Guyere on offer and the meringue with fresh strawberries and “yogurt”, which looked surprising like the double cream we had the previous night!
The tour of the cheese factory at La Maison du Guyère was an audio tour with Cherry the cow as our “guide”, some interesting facts that we learnt:
- Each cow eats 100kg of grass and 85L of water a day to produce 25L of milk
- 12L of milk are used to produce 1kg of cheese
- 7 million litres of milk is the certified AOC production of Guyere, of which 2/3 is consumed within Switzerland
We were able to see the cheesemakers at work through the various stages of production and the sample at the end was 3 small pieces of 6, 8 and 10 month Guyere… The group was split as to which was each of our favourites, so you will just have to try all of them and make your own mind up!
Travel date: 29 April 2012
Reflections 