Handpicked experience · Geneva
Geneva, Switzerland
Why this cheese has no holes, what four hundred litres of milk becomes, and the two accidents near here that turned chocolate from a bitter drink into a bar.
An air-conditioned coach out of Geneva with lake views along the way
A visit to the chocolate works, tasting included
The cheese dairy, with its exhibition and a look at production
Unstructured time in the medieval streets and at the viewpoints
A multilingual guide on board
Ten hours out of Geneva for two things made from the same herd of cows: the hard mountain cheese of Gruyères and a chocolate factory that still runs on fresh milk. Roughly four of those hours are spent on the road, which leaves a comfortable rather than generous amount of time in each place.
Start here, because almost everyone arrives expecting them. The holes belong to a different Swiss cheese entirely, produced by bacteria that release gas into the paste as it matures. Gruyère is made without them: dense, faintly grainy, and increasingly savoury the longer it is kept. If it has holes, it is not this.
The rules are unusually strict even by Swiss standards. The cows may not be fed silage or anything fermented, only grass in summer and hay in winter, because fermented feed introduces bacteria that ruin the paste. Milk is collected twice a day and must become cheese within hours of leaving the animal. It takes around four hundred litres to make one wheel of about thirty-five kilos, and that wheel is then turned and rubbed with brine for months while it hardens and the flavour concentrates.
Gruyères sits on a hill and is entered on foot up a cobbled ramp, with the castle at the top and one long street between. Nothing motorised comes in. The counts who built the place ran out of money in the sixteenth century and their creditors, the neighbouring cities, carved the lands up between them, which is why a medieval seat of some importance simply stopped growing and stayed the shape it was.
Halfway up that street is a museum devoted to the Swiss artist who created the creature and sets for a famous science fiction film, housed in a building attached to the castle, with a bar across the road fitted out in vertebral arches. It is an entirely unexpected thing to meet in a medieval hill village, and it is worth ten minutes even if the work is not to your taste.
Chocolate was a bitter drink until two things happened close to here. In 1875 a candlemaker turned confectioner worked out how to combine cocoa with condensed milk, which had just been invented up the road, producing the first milk chocolate that did not spoil. Four years later another maker left a mixing machine running for a whole weekend by accident and discovered that prolonged grinding turned gritty chocolate smooth. That process is still used everywhere, and both of those things happened within an hour of where you will be standing.
Most large chocolate makers use powdered milk, which travels well. The plant you are visiting still takes fresh milk from farms in the surrounding valleys and condenses it on site, which is why the building smells the way it does and why the product tastes noticeably different from the export bars sold at airports. Watch for the tasting room, which operates on trust and defeats most people.
Meals are not part of it, so leave room and appetite for the region's own dessert, meringue with the local double cream. Departure is from a stated meeting place in the city unless collection was chosen at booking. Cancellation is free up to a day ahead.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
Because the holes belong to a different Swiss cheese, formed by bacteria releasing gas as it ripens. This paste is made dense and slightly granular, and it sharpens with age rather than opening up.
No silage or fermented feed of any kind, grass in summer and hay in winter, collection twice daily, and the milk turned into cheese within hours of milking. Fermented feed carries bacteria that spoil the texture.
Enough to fill four large bathtubs for a single thirty-five kilo round. That ratio is why the dairies sit among the pastures rather than near the towns: moving the milk is harder than moving the finished cheese.
No. It is reached on foot up a cobbled ramp, with a castle at the top and a single street below it. Nothing motorised enters, which is part of why it looks the way it does.
It holds the work of the Swiss artist behind the creature and sets of a famous science fiction film, in a building attached to the castle, with a themed bar opposite built out of vertebral arches.
Two things, both nearby. Combining cocoa with condensed milk in 1875 to make a milk chocolate that kept, and discovering four years later that grinding it for far longer than anyone had bothered to makes it smooth.
Because the plant condenses fresh milk from surrounding farms on site rather than using powder. It is the reason for the smell of the building and for the gap between this and export bars.