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When Nazi soldiers burned down a village in the eastern Alps, they didn't destroy everything.
At least one resident, Rezka Mali, carried in her head a tradition that would endure even as the country where she lived was reformed, transformed and recreated around her.
Over the next 70 years, she has shared the recipe for the handmade sour-milk Trnič cheese with those hardy enough to brave the mountain life in what is now Slovenia.
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Only cattle grazed on the rich fodder of lush Alpine pastures can produce milk of a strong enough flavor to make the distinctive cheese. And it takes patience and skill to follow the traditional recipe.
But the traditional methods of cheese-making, using sour milk, thought to have been invented by nomadic peoples in the early Middle Ages, have been gradually disappearing as tastes and production methods change.
Today, however, largely thanks to Mali, the Trnič cheese is still produced on the Velika Planina plateau, where herders' circular wooden huts are still used as accomodation.
The distinctive huts of Velika Planina. /CGTN
Not only does the cheese have a traditional recipe, but also a romantic story. It is said to have developed its distinctive shape thanks to cow herders, who had headed alone to the higher ground with their livestock for the summer months.
As a souvenir in the fall they made the pear-shaped cheese to resemble female breasts. In the still-soft cheeses they pressed unique shapes and patterns using self-carved wooden pens called pisavas, about 20 centimeters long.
At the end of the summer, when they moved back down from the mountain pastures, the herdsmen gave two Trnič cheeses to their adored. If the cheese was accepted, it was a sign that they, too, had feelings for the herdsman – and engagement and happy-ever-afters often followed.
Nevertheless, such traditions must continue to struggle to survive as cattle herding in the Alps declines due to increased opportunities in modern industries. Nowadays tourism is looked to as a solution to ensure interest in, and production of, Trnič continues.
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This story forms part of CGTN Europe's series The Alps: Timeless and Changing, originally published in September 2019.
Interviews: Johannes Pleschberger. Video producer: Alex Hunt. Video editor: Pedro Duarte.