Emmental wheel
A large wheel of hard cheese, pierced with round holes two to four centimetres across. Born in the Emme valley, Emmentaler AOP is made from the raw milk of cows fed without silage; a wheel weighs 75 to 120 kg.
In the warm cellar of a cheese dairy, a wheel nearly a metre across is turned over and its yellowish-brown rind rubbed. The task comes round every week. Inside, bacteria hollow out the holes that make this cheese instantly recognisable.
Origin
It owes its name to the Emmental, the valley of the Emme, in the canton of Bern. According to the dossier submitted to the Confederation for its designation, it is mentioned in writing as early as 1542, and at first it was made only on the alpine pastures. The lowlands had their first cheese dairy at Kiesen in 1813; from 1840, other German-speaking regions took it up and exports began. The recipe was only standardised in the 19th century, notes Culinary Heritage of Switzerland.
Making
The specification requires milk that is always raw, with no silage in the cowshed, from farms no more than 20 km away, and never heated above 40 °C. It is processed within 24 hours of the earliest milking, in a copper vat. Heated to 52–54 °C and pressed for up to twenty hours, the curd goes into brine. Then comes the warm cellar, between 19 and 24 °C: there, propionic bacteria produce a gas that cannot escape and opens up round or oval holes, most of them 2 to 4 cm across. A wheel weighs 90 kg on average, sometimes up to 120.
At the table
According to this specification, the cheese is ivory in winter and pale yellow in summer; its flavour is sweet and tangy, slightly salty. It is grated over a gratin, fills a cordon bleu, goes with cervelas in a salad or is eaten with bread, notes Culinary Heritage of Switzerland. In aged wheels, a salty-sweet droplet sometimes beads at the bottom of a hole.
Today
Emmentaler AOP ripens for at least four months in its region: eight cantons, from Bern to Thurgau, and two districts of Fribourg. After eight months, it may be called “extra” or “réserve”; “cave-aged” requires a year, six months of it in a cellar cut into the rock. In 2007, according to Culinary Heritage of Switzerland, 193 cheese dairies produced 31,000 tonnes of it, more than of any other cheese in the country.
Sources: Culinary Heritage of Switzerland, entry “Emmentaler (AOP)”; Federal Office for Agriculture, summary of the registration application for Emmentaler and specification of Emmentaler AOP (version amended in 2025).