Rolf Beeler is a

Swiss Swiss most commonly refers to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Swiss may also refer to: Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina * Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss Café, an old café located ...

affineur known for his

raw milk Raw milk or unpasteurized milk is milk that has not undergone pasteurization, a process of heating liquid foods to kill pathogens for safe consumption and extension of shelf life. Proponents of raw milk have alleged numerous purported benefits t ...

artisan cheese Artisanal cheese refers to cheeses produced by hand using the traditional craftsmanship of skilled cheesemakers. As a result, the cheeses are often more complex in taste and variety. Many are aged and ripened to achieve certain aesthetics. This c ...

s. He does not make cheese himself but collects

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-based cheeses from small

artisan An artisan (from , ) is a skilled craft worker who makes or creates material objects partly or entirely by hand. These objects may be functional or strictly decorative, for example furniture, decorative art, sculpture, clothing, food ite ...

cheesemaker Cheesemaking (or caseiculture) is the craft of making cheese. The production of cheese, like many other food preservation processes, allows the nutritional and economic value of a food material, in this case milk, to be preserved in concentrate ...

s and then ages them to create the final product.

Career

After completing his education, Rolf Beeler worked as a

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and DJ. He ran his own grocery store for a time, then sold it and started to work directly with cheese makers abroad, including French cheesemaker Bernard Antony. Beeler turned his house basement into a small cheese cellar and started to age and ripen his favourite cheeses, which he bought from small local producers. Business went well and he expanded his range. After succeeding in production of traditional Swiss cheeses, he started to develop new cheese recipes in collaboration with his fellow cheesemakers, starting with wine-washed Hoch Ybrig. He became known in Switzerland as “the Pope of cheese”.

Sélection

By the end of the 1990s, Beeler decided to expand to foreign markets and introduced his Sélection Rolf Beeler at the Slow Food Fair Salone del Gusto in

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, Italy, in 1998. By 2013, Sélection could be found on the menus of more than 120 top restaurants in Germany, England, Switzerland, Scandinavia, USA and Australia.

Awards

* Toggenburger Sélection Rolf Beeler won gold medal at World Cheese Award 2009 held in

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. * Jersey Blue by Willi Schmid won the gold medal at the 2010 and 2012 World Jersey Cheese Awards.The Red Cow website
/ref> * Max McCalman rated 186 cheeses in his book, ''Cheese: A Connoisseur's Guide to the World's Best''. 17 of the top 30 are from Rolf Beeler with the top spot going to Beeler's Sbrinz.

Career

Sélection

Awards

References

Works cited

Further reading