by Austin Coe Butler
Adopt an Alp is a program designed to support the age-old practice of transhumance in Switzerland while being rewarded with some of the world’s best cheese! It was founded by Caroline and Daniel Hofstettler of Quality Cheese. I met Caroline last year during ACS Judging & Competition, and she is one of my favorite people in the world of Cheese, humble and affable with an incredible passion and sense of stewardship for her native Swiss cheeses.
Transhumance is one of the most ancient and fascinating practices, as I’ve written about many, many, many times before. For those of you unfamiliar with this time-worn tradition, it revolves around the migration of people and animals during the seasons, not limited to but often including, passage up into the highlands or mountains during the summer to graze on wild, pristine pastures before returning back down to the safety of the valleys at the start of autumn. This millennia old tradition is one of the most remarkable celebrations of all those things entwined in cheese: the people, the animals, the places, the seasons, the flavors, traditions, and cultures. With the rise of industrialized food systems, this time honored tradition has become harder to practice and the cheese made by it rarer to find. Transhumance is the tradition Caroline is preserving through the Adopt-an-Alp Program. And I’m happy to announce that so are we… and you! Yes, you reading this!
How? Adopt-an-Alp works like this: Caroline criss-crosses Switzerland finding the best cheesemakers she can on various mountains or Alps. Once she has a roster, she sends it to us, and we get to pour over the details and find the right producer and cheese for our customers. There are over 28 different Alps that you can adopt! Once we talk with Caroline and select an Alp, we place an order and the cheese travels from that Alp in Switzerland straight to us where we sell it to you!
This year we’ve adopted Alp Heuboden and the Tschudi family to sell their Glarner Alpkäse AOP! Alp Heuboden is located in the canton of Glarus, a small, exceptionally mountainous region in east central Switzerland. (A Swiss friend of mine jokes that one lives perpetually in shadow there because of how high the mountains and deep the valleys are, even for Switzerland!) Here on Alp Heuboden, the Tschudi family, comprised of three generations, including Fritz and Anna, the parents, and Peter and Annalies, Peter’s wife, the inheritors of the Alp, graze their cows and make cheese from June to September. Over the course of the summer, the family walks up the mountain with their herd of cows, goats, and pigs in tow from 4,000 feet to over 6,000 feet. The highest point of the Tschudi’s Alp, Oberstafel, is only reachable by foot, so in order to resupply provisions, laundry, equipment, and deliver cheese a helicopter(!) arrives once a week. Logistical challenges peak at this elevation, and Annelies is in control of planning, ordering, and cooking meals for a whole week for ten people!
Due to the isolation of Alp Heuboden, produced at a higher elevation and disconnected from any roads, an exception was made by the Glarner Alpkäse AOP board for the Tschudis. Typically for Glarner Alpkäse AOP, once a wheel of it is produced, it is immediately transported to the communal cellars of Glarona where Heinz Trachsel and his team of affineurs oversee the aging. Instead, the Tschudis are allowed to age their cheese in their own cellars until the end of the Alp season before being brought to the AOP caves.
This summer was an eventful one for the Tschudis as they moved a mobile saw to the Oberstafel. They will cut and mill wood from their own forest to begin a major rebuild of their chalet. Included in the project will be new barns for the calves and pigs, a chalet with a kitchen, a living room, and several private bedrooms (a big improvement on the current layout that is composed of two big rooms for the whole family), and new plumbing.
What else makes this cheese so special? Imagine you are walking up the steep incline of Alp Heuboden. You are winded from the thin, Alpine air and bend over to put your hands on your knees and catch your breath. There, among the grass, you see the heroes of this cheese, and the gems of the Alps come into focus in a dazzling display and diversity of herbs, flowers, and grasses: hawkweed and hyacinth, pastel primulas, purple cornflower, sprays of blue bellflower, angelica, and vetch, while the scent of bruised fragrant rock thyme, meadow sage, wild basil, and chives rise from under your boots. Foxglove, monk’s hood, orchids, lilies, and gentians shimmer and sway from cracks in the exposed rocks. These ephemeral, pristine pastures are what make the milk, and this cheese, exceptional.
What does the Tschudi’s Glarner Alpkäse taste like? It’s incredibly balanced, with flavors of hazelnut, chives, eggs, and smoky, sugar cured bacon, and a booziness that warms your cheeks and jaw. Its humble exterior conceals a deep straw colored paste, studded with fine tyrosine crystals. It’s a perfect cheese to bring to a celebration of family or friends who’s taste in cheese you may not know.
This Glarner Alpkäse AOP was made in Summer 2021 and aged for over a year. In September, when the mists and rains deepen and the brilliant, blue gentians will soon be covered in snow, the Tschudis close up the barn and march down the mountainside for another season, enacting again the transhumant tradition. As an AOP (Appellation d’origine protégée) cheese, Glarner Alpkäse is a protected designation of origin that insures the origin and quality of traditional food products are protected. By buying this cheese you not only get to enjoy real Swiss cheese, you help keep a tradition alive!
I encourage you to watch this video that Daniel, Caroline’s husband, made of their trip to Alp Heuboden in 2016.
Pssst! Want to know more about transhumance cheeses? We’ll be teaching a class about it next year in addition to all the exciting classes and events we have planned for our shiny, new Events space! Looking for that perfect gift for someone special? Consider gifting a class!