The cheese that is born in summer
something's wrong with a cheese when a documentary is dedicated to him (not one, four; directed by Jeanne Burgon ) and when its producers voluntarily abandon one of the strictest appellations of origin on the planet because it is 'too soft'; nothing less than Gruyère in the Swiss canton of Friborg.
L'Etivaz it is his little brother and also the first Swiss cheese with a pike, a territory hitherto exclusively for wine; because he was the first to get the Appellation of origin (A.O.P., the acronym for appellation d'origine protégée ) certified in 1999 and also the first to demonstrate to the world that luxury could be dressed in golden hardcover of this perfect cheese.
A obsession with perfection and the extreme meticulousness that frightens; and I am afraid that in this gastronomy we use the terms 'craft' or 'territory' loosely, and no.
I suspect that if Stanley Kubrick or Jiro Ono had to dress up as a cheese, they would do so from this treasure made in the canton of Vaud on the Swiss Alps, and they would do so because of the extreme essentiality and unapologetic respect for tradition : demons, this is luxury . I'll tell you the whys, they're really exciting; they excite me.
L'Etivaz is a fromage d'alpage à pâte dure ; that is, a hard alpine cheese made with raw milk (fundamental, this detail) from spring to autumn, perhaps that is why they call it the cheese that is born in summer . I call him the perfect cheese.
It is precisely in autumn, when the cows finish their 'work' in the Alps —grazing, that is— when they are received by the locals and nearby towns as the Goddesses they are with a party in their honor: it is called desalpe , It is held in Pays d'Enhaut and I have never seen anything like it: the people around the cattle, cows crowned with flowers (that is, not locked in herds) and the sincere reverence of an entire country.
I almost cried with shame when I asked them the reason for all this folklore: “ we live thanks to them , these cattle are responsible for our way of life, how could we not take care of them? I wonder the same thing.
Desalpe, ode to the cows that give us so much
They are the same cows that have grazed fresh grass and only fresh grass (because if not, it is not Etivaz) thanks to the seventy families dedicated to shepherding who take care of the more than one hundred century-old chalets responsible for the miracle during the summer months; Château d'Oex, L'Hongrin, La Lécherette, Les Tesailles or Rossinière.
Here life passes slowly and each day starts at dawn with tasks that have not changed a millimeter in hundreds of years: milking, heating milk over wood over copper cauldrons or taking care of the pastures with no other schedule than the sun, I don't know miss the route you take Christopher Bagley about any day in the life of shepherds Frédéric and Marina Rozat (and their very ruby churumbeles).
At most, they will be made two pieces of cheese per family and day until autumn comes and nature says enough; there is no more and that is all the Etivaz that we will be able to gobble up in the rest of the world because there are no factories or shortcuts here, just honesty ; and our tables will be flooded with its infinite creaminess and that aroma of flowers, nuts and eternity . That taste of truth.