Piazza Italian Market has just adopted an Alp. In this case, that refers to adopting a Swiss Alp cheese. The three-year-old program was created to generate awareness and appreciation for the endangered practice of transhumance. Piazza is one of only 38 stores in the US that are participating in this unique program to promote high quality cheese made by traditional methods.
Historically, cheeses in Switzerland were all produced using transhumance. That’s a fancy word for the practice of moving livestock from one grazing ground to another, typically to lowlands in winter and highlands in summer.
As the mountainsides warmed in the spring and summer, the cows grazed on lush, high pastures and the herdsmen followed them, living and making cheese in small huts. While the idea of spending a solitary summer high up on a Swiss mountain with only animals for company might sound idyllic, life away from the comforts of home is not easy. Some of the huts that provide shelter have neither running water nor electricity. Remarkably, production of Alpage (cheese made from alpine-grazed cow’s milk) has increased over the last 3 years, arguably due to the Adopt-an-Alp program.
Piazza has selected to sponsor Alp Abnistetten, which is located seven miles above the town of Hasle in the Entlebuch region in canton Lucern. Alp Abnistetten is the home of Reto and Silvia Theiler-Steger, their four young children and Reto’s father from mid-May until the end of September. The house and dairy on Alp Abnistetten has been in Reto’s family since 1948 and a rotating cadre of cousins and relatives have an annual tradition of visiting the homestead and helping. Were it not for the Adopt-an-Alp program, their cheeses would not leave canton Lucerne, let alone Switzerland.
The family only makes cheese in the summer when the quality of the milk is at its peak. At the end of the season the Theiler-Steger family and their herd parades down the mountain back to the valley in traditional dress (cows included) with 7 other cheese maker families to celebrate their productive summer. During the rest of the year Reto and Silvia live in the valley near Hasle where they are farmers.
Piazza will host a kick-off event to introduce the Alpage cheeses on Saturday, December 3rd from 5:00-7:00 at the store located at Talbotown shopping center. Come join us to sample Alp Abinstetten’s cheeses plus appetizers and northern Italian wines. Have your picture taken behind one of our Swiss cut outs, buy a raffle ticket for a gift certificate to Piazza and participate in a fun Trivia Contest about Swiss culture to win a bottle of wine to begin your holiday celebration. As part of this special promotion, Piazza will sponsor a story hour for children at the St. Michaels Branch Library on Wednesday, December 14.
Adopt-an-Alp was created by Caroline Hostetter at Quality Cheese and it is officially supported by Schweizerischer Alpwirtschaftlicher Verband (SAV), Swiss government agency for protecting and marketing Alp products including the platform https://alpkase.ch. All cheeses sold through the Adopt-an-Alp program are exclusively imported by Mifroma USA and distributed by Atalanta Corp.
For more information or to make a reservation please call Jennifer Martella at 410-253-1100.
Write a Letter to the Editor on this Article
We encourage readers to offer their point of view on this article by submitting the following form. Editing is sometimes necessary and is done at the discretion of the editorial staff.