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Bargain Travel Europe guide to Europe on a budget for unusual destinations,
holiday travel tips and secret spots missed by travel tours.


SWISS



LA MAISON DU GRUYÈRE
Gruyères Cheese Dairy Factory Tour

Gruyere Cheese Factory Floor photoYou 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), Cheese aging storage photosliced, 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.

Entrance Cheese Factory Tour photoYour 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. Cheese Making Tour Viewing photoThe 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.

Gruyere Cheese Case Wheel slices photoThe 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

Fondue Restaurant Gruyere Factory photoThe 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 Travel Europe

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SEE ALSO:

GIGER MUSEUM & BAR - GRUYERES

GOLDEN PASS LINE SCENIC TRAIN

CHATEAU D'OEX - BALLOON RIDES

LAVAUX WINE VINEYARD TERRACES

MONTREUX NOEL CHRISTMAS MARKET

CHOCOLATE TRAIN EXCURSION