Visit to the Chalet du coin d'Aval

Dating back to 1824, this old building, known as "le chalet" in Franche-Comtois, is the only one of the forty cheese dairies of the time in Grandvaux to have retained all its authenticity, making it a well-preserved example of Grandvaux's heritage.

Opening the chalet for guided tours brings this place back to life. Two linden trees, also 200 years old, add a bucolic charm with their generous, cool shade in summer.
A picnic table set up by the volunteers is a welcome addition to the site.

Our chalet and the 40 others in the Grandvaux were the first cheese dairies to be built. They were built on the initiative of the farmers, who were already grouped together in cheese dairies.
In fact, making an imposing cheese like the ancestor of Comté requires a lot of milk (450 litres for a current Comté) and obliged the farmers to pool their milk. Hence the fruitière, an association of farmers, which at the time was on a hamlet scale.
Before these chalets were built, cheese-making took place on the farms in turn, each farmer bringing his milk to the farm where the cheese was made. The farmer where the cheese was made retained ownership of the cheese produced. Each of the other farmers therefore gave him his milk... in return. The "fruitière" was therefore also a community for the mutual lending of milk.

Every summer, the chalet is open to the public from 14 July to the Sunday after 15 August, on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Sundays and public holidays, from 3pm to 7pm.

Enthusiastic volunteers will be on hand to tell you all about the history of the Grandvaux countryside, how the cheese dairies work and the traditional skills involved in making Comté cheese, past and present.

Take a 40-minute guided tour and discover :
The building, its layout and design.
The hamlet chalet, a place to live and socialise.
The original way in which the farmers organised their dairy.
The production equipment and its use.
The magic of transforming milk into Comté cheese.
The secrets of maturing cheese wheels.
The adventure of transporting cheese by road.

Then, during a twenty-minute film, you can watch a re-enactment of a cheese-making process, using period equipment and costumed volunteers, filmed at the Chalet du Coin d'Aval: decanting, heating the milk and curds over a wood fire, racking with cloth, pressing with the enrochoir press and finally ripening.

In addition, the butter-making process in the churn can also be briefly explained and illustrated using old equipment in a room next to the chalet: the butter factory.