Bergkäse Alex is a Bavarian mountain cheese made with the raw milk of cows who graze freely on the rich, green pastures of the Allgäu Mountains in Southwest Germany. It is made by cheesemaker Albert Kraus, who uses his brother, Xaver’s, Allgäu Brown Swiss cow’s milk, at his creamery in the lower Bavarian alps, around 2500 feet above sea level. Albert and his team started cheese production in March 1999 at the Hofkäserei Kraus dairy in Ebersbach and all the milk used is sourced from within 5km of the dairy. The dairy guarantees that cows their cows are never fed silage; for most of the year they are surrounded by abundant pasture on the mountainside and graze on grasses, herbs and flowers, though their diet is subsided with homegrown hay in the winter, where necessary.
The Bergkäse Alex is named after the German rail line that connects the Alpine region of the Allgäu where the cows live and the cheese is produced, to the urban area surrounding Munich, where it is traditionally sold.
Bergkäse Alex is a very large cheese, made in a similar way to Comté and Gruyère, and is regularly washed in brine, packed with a special blend of hand picked herbs, as it matures. After around 7 months of ageing, a dark coloured ash made from hay is added in powder form to an elderflower cordial and brine mix, which gives the cheese its iconic maroon coloured coating.
The milk that goes into Bergkäse Alex comes from one small, family owned and run farm, which allows the animals to live on the vast pastures on the Allgäu mountains, eating organic, untouched grasses, herbs and flowers. The carbon footprint of free range cows is significantly lower than their barn kept counterparts as food doesn’t need to be grown for them elsewhere, so there are very few, if any, food miles involved in their feeding.