Cheese making is an old world art

By Linda Hall

Cheese-making is an old-world art form, practiced in Amish country and kept alive by generations of family practitioners whose ancestors brought the tasteful tradition with them from the snow-covered mountains of Switzerland to the misty valleys of Ohio.

Each family group, carrying with it a unique way of working through a similar process, makes a product that bears its own special brand of taste and originality. Two families who brought their craft to Holmes County are the Guggisbergs and the Dauwalders.

Alfred and Margaret Guggisberg emigrated in 1947 from Berne, Switzerland, to Millersburg, Ohio. Alfred had studied cheese-making not only in Europe but also in Africa.

Although he originally targeted Austria as the location for his own cheese-making enterprise, a neighbor in Switzerland mentioned Ohio’s need for skilled cheese-makers. He emigrated a year before the rest of his family, all of whom eventually became involved in the business.

His wife, Margaret, whose dream was to operate a “little shop,” according to Guggisberg Cheese manager Marylynn Rowe, has fully realized her goal with the Chalet in the Valley portion of the Guggisberg complex. Alfred has passed away, but Margaret is still active in company business.

Son Eric runs the Swiss Inn, and his brother Richard is in charge of the two factories, the newer of which is located in Sugarcreek.

The entire complex began with nothing more than large copper kettles—which could produce up to a 200-pound block of cheese a day—and old world family ingenuity, perseverance, and tradition. As the area grew, so did the Guggisberg cheese factory. By 1967, the family had created its current signature item, Baby Swiss, Rowe said, in order to satisfy “a need for something different.”

Before the area developed as a tourist attraction, she said, the “stronger taste” of European style cheese “really took off.”

Over the years, customers have come to crave the “mild, creamy” flavor of Baby Swiss, so named by Magaret Guggisberg because she thought it looked like the small offspring of the original Swiss cheese.

The cheese-making process at Guggisberg begins early in the morning with the purchase of milk, primarily from farmers in Wayne and Holmes County who maintain comparatively small herds.

Pasteurized milk is then pumped into three stainless steel vats and held for three to four hours. It goes through several different stages during which curds and whey (the watery portion of the milk) are separated. Whey is stored for use in other products. Curds, the component used for cheese, are pressed down with heavy lids that press out as much of the whey as possible and flatten the cheese into wheel molds.

After the cheese is packaged, it must be moved to warming cellars. It is this portion of the process through which it gains its flavor and its holes. Each package is dated and tracked with weight and type noted to assure the proper length of time needed to allow trapped carbon dioxide to release and “pop the holes.”

Rowe emphasizes that cheese connoisseurs “get very picky about cheese,” which is rated by the quality of its holes, or “eyes,” its size and its shape, and even its “shine,” which is observed in the holes by the “true cheese-maker.”

The ingredients that make each cheese slightly different are the cultures and enzymes that are added to the vats and that “go to work in the warming cellar.”

The flavor of cheese, Rowe says, is even affected by the time of the year in which the milk is produced and by what the cows are eating.

Fat and protein content are also adjusted for different types of cheese. In general, fattier cheeses are creamier.

When the cheese is aged and ready, Guggisberg sells it wholesale, retail, and through mail order distribution in Ohio and the Pittsburgh area, although “we are starting to spread out a bit,” Rowe said.

Cheese can continue to age slowly, even once it has reached its peak, in a cold cellar for up to two years; a period of six months produces a sharper flavor. Left outside of refrigeration to “puff out,” as some customers like it to do, is safe because a vacuum-packed seal assures it will not mold.

Bunker Hill Cheese, recognized by the “Heini’s” brand produced at Heini’s Cheese Chalet and Amish Country Mall, carved out a niche in the Amish country in similar fashion to the Guggisbergs.

Lisa Troyer, Bunker Hill’s director of sales and marketing, relates the journey to America of her grandfather, John Dauwalder, and her great-uncle, Crist Dauwalder, from Switzerland in the late 1800’s.

Like other Swiss farmers who made cheese on their farms and wished to emigrate to the United States, the brothers were listed with other individuals “desiring to come over,” Troyer says, and were sought after in the American cheese-making market.

The Dauwalder brothers made their way to the Doughty Valley near Berlin. During World War II John returned to his native country to serve it and to provide shelter to refugees on his farm until the war was over.

After the war, John sold his farm in Switzerland and along with his wife, Lili, returned to the U. S. and purchased the cheese-making business Crist had founded.

Troyer’s parents, Peter and Nancy Dauwalder, bought the company in 1962, and Troyer and her two sisters were “cheese kids all along,” giving tours, offering food samples, and scooping ice cream. “It was a good experience for all three of us,” she recalled.

The Dauwalders , too, began with three copper kettles; they are now in their third generation of family-owned cheese production. They utilized their particular family recipe, guaranteeing an individual taste. Other factors affect that unique taste as well, Troyer explained. Even if every producer used the same recipe, the resulting cheese would still taste different due to the environment in which the cultures are grown and the variations in moisture content.

Heini’s cheese caters to specialty food distributors and consumers with “more of a European style flavor and quality.”

At Bunker Hill, the curds are pressed into forms for a minimum of 12 hours, decreasing the whey moisture as well as the salt content needed in the product. “The more liquid moisture we get out, the firmer the product,” Troyer said.

Heini’s specialty is yogurt cheese, a pleasant, mild-flavored product whose popularity has “grown substantially over the last two decades,”

Troyer said. Two yogurt cultures, acidophilus and bisidus, “are present in the cheese-making environment, with acidophilus having “a natural affinity for sweetness.”

Bunker Hill products include a variety of other cheeses, including Swiss, Colby, Cheddar, and farmer’s, a mild, less fatty cheese good for deli sandwiches.

Troyer emphasized the company’s interest in the health quality of its cheeses, which contain no artificial coloring or additives. In addition, and just as importantly, Heini’s guarantees that the milk it uses is 100 percent Amish milk from local Amish farmers, many of whom have extremely small herds that are afforded lush pasture land for grazing. Those farmers sign contracts saying they use no artificial hormones or bovine growth hormones.

“There is something about the milk from this area,” Troyer said.. “It has a unique property to it.”
When the Amish label is placed on a product, she said, producers owe both consumers and the Amish farmers themselves, who often pay a higher cost of doing business in the “old-fashioned way,” the integrity of a truly Amish-produced commodity. Heini’s makes this pledge.

“It’s something I want to maintain—working with farmers in the community. They operate with the same principles as a family business (like Heini’s), Troyer said.”

Troyer related an anecdote about the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” quality of a family business. When the Bunker Hill company incorporated, it had thousands of labels made with the “Heidi’s” trademark. Her grandparents and parents were not familiar with copyright laws and felt formally threatened when a restaurant named Heidi’s said they would sue the Dauwalders for using the same name. Grandmother Lili’s ingenuity came to the forefront to avoid the financial disaster of replacing all the labels. Lili suggested changing, with a magic marker, the “d” in Heidi’s to an “n” in Heini’s, Heini being the Swiss nickname for name Heinrich.

“Blessings come in the oddest ways,” Troyer said. Heini’s is a more unusual name that sticks in the minds of customers. “All things work together for good,” she quoted from the Bible. “The Lord has been good to us.”

The Heini’s informational video says that “nature, science, and artistry” blend to make its quality product.

Both Guggisberg Cheese and Bunker Hill Cheese have retained the original quality of their workmanship and individual input and care, even though their businesses have evolved from cottage industries to modern facilities. The cheese they make maintains the same old-fashioned flavor as the misty morning in the time standing still countryside of Holmes County.