Happenstance helped restore a centuries-old tradition to the Swiss village of Pontresina.
It was there that Hansjürg Wüthrich, a commercial cheese distributor, spied a 250-year-old building where village tradesmen once made cheese by hand.
When Wüthrich learned of the old building's history, he decided to relocate to Pontresina. For the past decade, he has been demonstrating the craft of handmade cheese to visitors.
Turning Milk Into Cheese
Making cheese by hand is a lengthy process, but Wüthrich considers it a labor of love.
Born into a farming family, he used to take the milk from his father's dairy herd twice daily to the local cheese maker. Wüthrich says he was influenced profoundly by what he saw there. "This is my business," he recalled thinking.
Wüthrich later went on to study and master the craft of cheese making.
Now based in Pontresina's renovated cheese dairy, Wüthrich uses milk from the herds of four local farmers, who bring their cows in the summer to the mountains to graze under his care.
Wüthrich makes cheese only from mid-June through September while the cows feed on nearby alpine slopes and are available to milk.
Milking the cows both starts and ends a day of cheese making at the dairy. Wüthrich mixes the collected milk with bacteria and rennet—an enzyme derived from calf's stomach that helps coagulate milk proteins to form the solids that become cheese—and then heats the ingredients to 86°F (30°C).
After 30 minutes, the heated milk mixture has thickened enough to be cut into small pieces with a utensil called a cheese harp. The resulting product has a consistency similar to cottage cheese. Wüthrich then warms it slowly to 118°F (48°C) for an hour and a half.
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