Just outside the eastern city limits of Bern rises the Bantiger mountain (947m); behind it stretches the EMMENTAL, a quintessentially Swiss landscape of peaceful, vibrantly green hills dotted with happily munching brown cows, sleepy rustic hamlets and isolated timber-built dairies. This is where Emmental cheese (the one with the holes) originates.

Here the mild is delivered fresh twice daily: over 1000 litres of pure, untreated milk are required to make one wheel of cheese weighing approximately 80 kilos. Then, according to an old tradition and with great intuitive feeling, the cheese making process starts. As in earlier times, cheese production still begins in a copper vat. After the cheese wheel has been formed in a cheese mould, it is placed in a salt bath for two days. It then spends six to eight weeks in the warm fer-menting cellar. During this time the famous holes are formed. The characteristic taste develops gradually in the maturing cellar, where it stays for 2 to 4 months. As soon as the taste is full and round, the consistency and colour are first-rate and the cherry-sized holes are regularly distributed, the carefully selected first-class quality cheeses continue their ripening process in the storage cellar.