Gailtaler Almkäse Brettl (Carinthian Alpine Cheese Board)

The first time I ate Gailtaler Almkäse was on a childhood trip to Carinthia with Gretel and my grandmother Eva. We stopped at an Almhütte somewhere above Hermagor, and the farmer's wife brought out a wooden board with cheese she'd made that summer from the milk of her own cows grazing on the slopes behind us. The cheese was pale gold, firm but not hard, with a nutty sweetness that tasted like the meadow smelled. Gretel cut a piece, put it on a thick slab of dark bread, and said nothing for a full minute. That's how you know the food is good. When Gretel stopped talking, it meant she was paying attention to what was in her mouth.

A Brettljause is the Austrian answer to the question of what to eat when the weather is fine and you'd rather be outside than standing at a stove. Brettl means board. Jause means snack, though calling it a snack undersells it by quite a lot. You lay out cheese, cured meats, bread, pickles, mustard, horseradish, and whatever else the kitchen offers on a wooden board, and you sit with it for an hour. Maybe two. There's no rush. This is Gemütlichkeit made edible.

The Gailtaler Almkäse is the anchor of this particular Brettl. It's a PDO cheese, which means it can only be made in the Gailtal valley in Carinthia from the raw milk of cows grazing on alpine pastures between June and September. You can't fake it and you can't replicate it somewhere else. The pasture flowers and grasses that the cows eat give the cheese its character. Every wheel tastes like the summer it was made in. Build the rest of the board around it, not the other way around.