A Swiss cheese without holes? You must be joking! Well, look again and you’ll uncover a dense, firm, pale yellow Swiss cheese that is naturally smooth and devoid of the “eyes” found in its sibling cheese. Cave Aged Le Gruyère Switzerland AOP Cheese is our Gruyère offering, bringing the Medieval Alpine cheese to live amongst our fridges and be discovered by our shoppers for a creamy, nutty flavor not found in other cheeses. An inimitable flavor and made with the utmost regard for quality, Cave Aged Le Gruyère’s production can be distilled into eight simple parts: the use of high quality, part skim cow’s milk; curdling of the milk in copper vats; cutting, mixing, and heating the curds; placing the paste into molds; bathing in salt and beginning the cheese’s storage; maturation in aging cellars; taxation by experts to denote that the cheese is of the quality to bear the Le Gruyère AOP name; and additional maturation time. The additional maturation of this specific Le Gruyère is a key to the final taste and texture. It’s aged in extremely humid “affinage” (maturation) cellars to keep the cheese moist while taking on the strong, bold flavors of a cheese that’s been given time alone to age. Not every cheese turns to a warm, decadent, ooey gooey pool of delight that you want to dive and dip into, but with Gruyère, we do get that pleasure. It takes a cheese made with rennet (as opposed to a cheese curdled with acid) to be a melting cheese, and then it takes a cheese with a high water-to-fat ratio to be a good melting cheese. Trader Joe’s Cave Aged Le Gruyère is a good melting cheese and goes wonderfully melted into sandwiches or enjoyed at room temp, solid, firm, and delicious!