The Day the Mountain Cheese Comes Down

Every autumn, the small village of Gruben, high in the Swiss Alps, holds its cheese fair. For one weekend, the narrow streets fill with long wooden tables, and the whole valley comes to buy, taste, and talk.

The fair consists of three main parts. In the morning, the farmers bring down the huge wheels of cheese they made during the summer, when the cows lived up on the high green pastures. On average, one family may carry as much as two hundred kilos of cheese down the mountain. In the afternoon, visitors move from table to table, tasting small pieces on wooden sticks. In the evening there is music, and the oldest cheese of the year is cut open in front of everyone.

But the fair is not really a market for tourists. Its true basis is much older. For hundreds of years, the families who shared the summer work also had to share the summer’s cheese. Each wheel is weighed and divided, so that every farmer receives a fair part, based on how many cows he sent up the mountain.

The contrast is easy to see. To a visitor, the fair looks like a happy party. To the village, it is a careful, serious business — the final step in a long summer of work, and, in a quiet way, the most important development of the whole farming year.