Vorarlberger Bergkäse

Appearance & taste

The wheels weigh 7 to 40 kg and are 8 to 12 cm high. The rind is smear-ripened to dried, yellowish brown to brown and grainy. The paste is firm enough to slice to supple and ivory to pale yellow. When cut, it shows a few evenly distributed, round holes about the size of a pea, matt to shiny; small cracks of 0.5 to 1 cm may occur. The taste is savoury and becomes sharp with increasing age.

Each cheese bears a casein mark with a serial number.

Production

The milk comes from grassland farms that neither produce nor feed silage; farms that feed silage to their young cattle may not deliver milk to the dairy. At least 70 % of the dairy cows’ feed comes from the area. Up to 30 % may be bought-in cereal meal, because the mountain area with its thin layer of humus is hardly suitable for arable farming.

Natural raw milk is used. To it are added dairy cultures of lactic acid bacteria that go back to traditional wild cultures, and calf rennet. When and how the curd is cut, the size of the curd grains, the stirring after cutting and the scalding of the mixture of curd and whey are decided by the cheesemaker on the basis of experience. Milk production, processing and ripening take place in the area.

Origin & history

According to the specification, the cheese has been made and eaten in Vorarlberg for many hundreds of years, for centuries mainly for own consumption and the regional market. In the middle of the 18th century, full-fat cheesemaking developed out of the altitude, the climate, the flora and fauna and the small farms; this way the cheese kept longer and earned more. Knowledge of making, ripening, feeding and milk processing was passed down from generation to generation and around 1890 brought together in associations, which were later followed by the cooperatives that still exist today.