La Maison du Gruyère

La Maison du Gruyère is located at the bottom of the road as you come down from Gruyères, opposite the Pringy-Gruyère train station. Here you find, housed within a large modern building, the cheese factory, a museum, a restaurant, and a shop. The factory produces up to 48 huge wheels of Gruyère cheese a day. There is an excellent, self-guided tour of the factory. As you enter you receive a packet with samples of aged cheeses and pick up your headset. The dialog is in various languages including, of course, English. You follow a designated path passing by excellent displays that show the history of cheeses, and then on into the cheese-making factory where you look down from a high, glassed-in gallery to view the entire process of cheese making. The factory has four 4800-lire vats and a cellar where up to 7,000 wheels of cheese can be stored and aged. As you progress, all of the stations are marked—you just need to access your headset to hear a narration describing what you are seeing. The factory is open from 9 am to 11 am and from 1 pm to 2 or 2 pm depending on the time of year.