Après Soleil

Cheesemaker: Glauser Dairies

Region: Switzerland, Bernese-Oberland, Belp

Milk: cows

Pasteurisation: no

Vegetarian: no

Most cheeses will age slowly in dark cellars or caves, where the temperature is constant and easily controlled. The cheesemakers who first created Apres Soleil, however, preferred to wash their cheeses in the open air of the Swiss mountains, stacking them behind the old dairy in Steinen in the evening sun to dry before returning them to the caves to mature.

The Swiss are renowned for a certain stoic down-to-earth nature, but beneath that facade they tell wonderful stories, often full of idyllic pastoral scenes - I've never been able to find any evidence to support the idea of cheesemakers lined up outside the dairies to wash their cheeses, but I've also never found anything refuting it either. True or not, it's a fabulous cheese with a firm, dense paste and a distinctly fruity flavour more akin to Vintage Cheddars or Parmigiano.

Pair with light ruby ales (No Rest for Dancers by Bristol brewers Lost and Grounded is a firm favourite!).