The charming and innovative restauranteurs, Annelies and Klaus Wallner, in the Brixen Valley near Kitzbühel have organized an alpine expedition for adventurous gourmets. Our trek shall take us to the Lärchenalm, an elevated mountain refuge, to visit the farmer, dairyman, and poet Sepp Kahn.

The farmer Sepp Kahn is a folk celebrity writing poetry and short stories in the local Tyrolean dialect.

Our hike begins in the Windau Valley and during the taxi drive there, I reflect on the history and culture of this fertile, mountainous landscape. Just fifty years ago, this very road we are on was but a trail. Our footpath up the mountain has been used for driving cattle for centuries. There is evidence that our destination on the lush green grassy mountainside above the timberline was used as pasture land seven thousand years ago, but as we hike up the Steinbergstein mountain today, we are walking the opposite direction of those ancient people. The threat of fire drove those first mountain settlers to expand the natural alpine pastures down the mountain slopes. Back then, the valleys were overgrown, swampy, and without trails. Now forests have been cleared, a network of roads and railways connects villages, and mountain rivers and streams have been tamed. Alpine dairy farming as it is known today first began its development from the valley upwards in the 7th century and in the 14th and 15th centuries experienced its pinnacle. Members of the aristocracy and the cloisters prized the sweet flavorful milk, butter, and cheese from animals that grazed on alpine grass and herbs at high elevations. Every farm had its herdsmen to drive the animals up the mountain for summer grazing and to bring the well-nourished beasts back down to spend their winters sheltered in the valley. Stone and wooden structures high in the mountains housed young, tanned dairymen and milkmaids making butter and cheese over the summer. This alpine culture continued in the Tyrol through post-WWII when industrialization, the construction of mountain roads, and the advent of cooperative cheese-making left only a few solitary alpine dairy men and women on the mountain. For the most part, milk is delivered by road to cooperative dairies in the valley and the most remote and elevated alpine pastures are used for grazing barren animals.

Carpets of Almrosen (wild rhododendron) are found above the timberline in the Alps in early summer.

It is a comfortable, leisurely hour and a half hike from the Windau Valley to the Lärchenalm. Along our way I recognize many of the flowering herbs still popular for medicinal use today: yarrow, arnica, St. John's wort, friendly forget-me-not, and sparkling dew drops in the leaves of lady's mantle along the trailside. We find tasty treasures along the entire mountainside. In the forest, there is wild garlic, woodruff, and plenty of wild mushrooms, mainly chanterelle and cep. Marshmallow, mint, and cress scent the mountain streams and as we reach higher elevations the vegetation gradually changes. The meadows above timberline are blooming with bright purple gentian, thyme, silver thistle, and pink carpets of alpine rhododendron.

Emerging from the forest into the juicy green pastureland just under the mountain peak, we see the Lärchenalm just before us. The pleasant gurgle of fresh, cool spring water greets us as it splashes into a trough carved out of one of the nearby larch trees that have given this mountain refuge its name Lärchenalm. Since this is the "Year of Water", Annelies has prepared a water tasting! We are able to taste fresh sweet water from a spring coming out of the slate stone on this mountain and compare it to the cool, somewhat saltier water originating from a chalk slope across the valley. We are also able to compare this with two other well-known bottled mineral waters, but we all seem to favor one of the fresh spring waters.

Inside the hut we are greeted by Sepp Kahn who is heating a batch of fresh cow's milk in a copper kettle over the fire to make Tilsiter cheese. As the milk curdles, he separates the curds from the whey and puts it into molds carved from pine. After it has been pressed several times, the cheese is put into a salt bath before being matured in the stone cellar. The whey is used to supplement the nourishment of his pigs.

In a typical cheese-maker's hut in the Tyrol, the open hearth for heating the milk is in the entrance.

Cheese is matured in the cool damp stone cellar and sold directly from the premises.

Small smoked cheeses from cow's milk called "ziga" are also made on Lärchenalm.

All the utensils for milking and making cheese and butter must be spotlessly clean.

After watching Sepp make cheese, he and his wife, Maria, invite us for a meal made from their own products. The smoked bacon called "Speck" is lean and firm, more like a dark ham, and seasoned with just enough salt. The cheese is mild and nutty with a fine grained consistency and the morning's butter is simply heavenly --- sweet and creamy as only alpine summer butter can be. Annelies invites us to a tasting of four typical Austrian wines to accompany our meal. Suddenly from above we hear the soft, gentle sound of horns. The Wallners have surprised us by organizing two musicians to play a few alpine harmonies to echo down the mountain.

Annelies Wallner pours us a glas of Grüner Veltliner from the Pfaffel Winery in Weinviertel.

Our alpine meal is accompanied by traditional folk music.

Once our hunger and thirst have been stilled, Sepp Kahn reads from his books in a language that is seldom written and only spoken. The humor of Tyrol is reflected in his writings ---at times harsh and cynical and at others sentimental and bittersweet. Both the language and the humor are difficult for the uninitiated to understand, but Sepp is able to communicate this treat well.

Before we leave Sepp cooks a dish called "Rahm-Miasl" on the wood burning stove. This dish is made in a large skillet with butter, flour, and heavy cream and topped with lingonberry compote from berries picked from the surrounding slopes. This extremely heavy pudding is eaten with a spoon directly from the pan and was traditionally made to nourish mountain herdsmen after a day of chopping the wood needed to heat both the hearth and the stove.

Back down in the valley, Annelies and Klaus Wallner invite us for a gourmet menu at their restaurant, Brixner Thalhof, made from local ingredients:

Stream Trout in Aspic with and Alpine Herb Salad
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Wild Chive Crème Soup
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Rump Steak with Chanterelle Sauce,
Roasted Potatoes and Steamed Nettle
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Deep-fried Elder Blossom with Vanilla Parfait

This tasty, well-presented meal was served with a selection of Austrian wines from small boutique wineries and was a perfect crowning to a perfect day in the Alps.