About Us
Our cheese dairy
Family owned since 1987
On June 1st, 1987, Walter and Irma Räss-Koller acquired the Tufertschwil cheese dairy from the artist Walter Dick. On that day, Walter Räss Junior began working as operations manager at the Tufertschwil cheese factory. Appenzeller cheese has been produced in Tufertschwil since 1896, initially as ¼-fat Räss.
On January 1st, 1992, Walter and Annelies Räss-Huser took over the cheese dairy from their parents.
Our history
As has always been the case, all milk suppliers from the area bring fresh milk to the cheese dairy twice a day. Since 1998, after the merger with the Lütisburg cheese dairy, these milk suppliers have also been coming to Tufertschwil. The amount of milk has increased from around 700,000 kg to around 1.10 million kg. The whey from cheese production is fed to the fattening pigs and the liquid manure is reused by the milk suppliers as fertilizer.
Great attention was paid to the quality of the cheese. The manageable quantity of a maximum of 60 wheels per day that can be produced every day of the year allows enough time to devote special attention to quality. The tireless pursuit of good quality has resulted in awards being won time and again. Between 1990 and 2013, the Tufertschwil cheese dairy was among the top ten Appenzeller cheese producers no less than 16 times. In addition, the cheese factory has repeatedly received diplomas at national and international competitions.
The promise in 2001 to try to produce cheese from pure Jersey milk was to fundamentally change the future of the Tufertschwil cheese dairy…
At the beginning of 2014, we decided to switch entirely to the production of Chällerhocker. Since June 2014, we have only produced Chällerhocker and Tufertschwiler in our cheese dairy.
