Willi Schmid, artisan cheesemaker, was one of eight children growing up on the family farm in the rolling, pre-alpine farmland of the Toggenburg in eastern Switzerland. Fascinated from an early age by the mysteries of milk’s leap to immortality, he left school to go straight into the cheese business, and worked his way around the country learning to make some of the classic varieties – Tilsiter, Appenzeller, Emmentaler, Sbrinz – for which Switzerland is famous. Today, Schmid epitomises the new generation of Swiss cheesemakers, bringing novelty to a formerly staid market.
After a few years practical experience, Schmid went back to dairy school where he developed a passionate interest in microbiology – which he refers to as Ch?ferli-Wissenschaft (“beetle science”). His first independent venture, in partnership with another cheesemaker, ended in disaster and left him vowing never to go near a cheese vat again. But after a two-year stint on a building site in Zurich he was tracked down by Rolf Beeler, celebrated affineur and champion of Swiss farmhouse cheeses, who urged him to think again. In 2006 he set up on his own in Lichtensteig on the edge of the Toggenburg.
Schmid is currently making around 30 different raw milk cheeses – hard, semi-hard and soft, from cow’s, goat’s and sheep’s milk, all sourced from local farms. When we met recently in his shoebox-sized cheese dairy, I asked how long it had taken to create them all.