Gruyere: Day 15

Friday was one of my favorite days!  Mostly because it was so unique.  (Read: We didn't go walk around a small, cute Swiss town).

We wanted to visit a cheese factory, and Google kept pointing us to one that was over an hour out of the way, in the French part of Switzerland.  We debated whether it was worth the extra driving, but decided to go for it since there was also a chocolate factory in the area.  It's hard to turn down cheese and chocolate.

We first walked into the actual town of Gruyere to eat a traditional Swiss meal: Raclette.  It's basically a HUGE chunk of cheese placed under a broiler, and the top starts to scorch.  You then scrape off the melted cheese with a stick and eat it with potatoes.  It was good-- but it was SO much cheese!  To the right is a picture similar to what our set up was at the restaurant.

Gruyere

After lunch, we visited La Maison du Gruyere-- the cheese factory.  The admission price includes samples of gruyere cheese-- aged for different lengths of time, so you can taste the differences.  Definitely gets stronger with time!  It also included a hilarious audio-guide, narrated by a cow named Cherry.  She quickly tries to become your new best friend, and after listening for about a minute we all looked at each other thinking, "Is this cow for real?"  She explained that she was a red cow, named Cherry because she was born during the cherry blossom season.  She "and her girlfriends" each have 4 stomachs to turn the grass they eat into milk.  She gets offended when the humans refer to "their cheese", because really, its the cows' cheese.  The audio guide explains the process of cheese making, and you can see down into the factory where the milk is getting stirred and made into cheese.  Then you see the area where it's cooled and stored for aging.  Then Cherry wishes you on your way with some heartfelt good bye, like you're a guest on the Oprah show.

Shelves where cheese is stored-- it's SO much cheese.  (And sorry my camera sucks. That's the flash against the glass, and my button to turn off the flash doesn't work).  

Cheese-making area

From the cheese factory we headed to the Cailler Chocolate factory.  I read online that they give out free samples-- and one review even mentioned something about "all you can eat."  We thought it was too good to be true, but were excited none-the-less.  This tour was more reminiscent of a ride at Universal Studios than a walk through a factory.  We started in a room right out of Aztec America, and heard a narration about cocoa being brought to the Aztec by a white God.  Then there was smoke, and a door opened, and we walked into the next stage of chocolate's history, continuing all the way to the forming of the Cailler brand and its merging with Nestle.  The animation was impressive.  At the end, we walked through some rooms showing the chocolate making process.  We could dig our hands into buckets of cocoa beans, hazelnuts, etc.  Very aromatic.  

This machine let you see chocolate pieces get drizzled in more chocolate, go through a cooler, and then a picker bounced back and forth putting them on the packaging, which was then sealed and cut.  Out the other end came all these little pieces of ready-to-eat chocolate.  We thought, "Yum, here's the all you can eat chocolate we read about!"  We stayed there for 5 minutes just eating chocolate, and stuffing our pockets.  

 Little did we know what waited around the corner..... drum roll.... the REAL all-you can-eat chocolate!  There were about 20 different types of chocolate on trays all around the room.  You could sample as much as you wanted.  (And this isn't cheap chocolate-- its the high-end quality stuff!)  We wanted to try everything, but by the end Amie and I were splitting the little pieces because we felt so sick.  But it was so good!  I would have probably paid $5 for a drink of milk in that moment to help wash down the chocolate.

Still smiling because its just the beginning

Speaking of drinks, on our way out, we stopped at a little factory store next door to buy drinks, and also some chocolate to take on the road.  And we were off to Interlaken!

Countryside in Gruyere.