For our last day in the Bologna area we went on a cheese tour that had been recommended by our Airbnb host. This was the food tour I had been looking forward to the most as I love cheese. Cheese tours are usually held in the morning so we got up early and drove to Caseificio Bassanese. There they make both Parmigiano Reggiano and ricotta cheese. They make the ricotta utilizing some of the byproduct of the parmigiano cheese so they don’t waste.
Every morning and evening they have several farms drop off truckloads of fresh milk. I can’t imagine how early the farmers have to get up every day. Making the cheese is a multi-step process that starts the night before with an evening milk delivery and needs to be completed within a set amount of time. It is made in copper boilers with just 3 ingredients; milk, rennet and salt.
Parmigiano Reggiano has been produced since 1200. It was first made at the Benedictine monasteries. To have their cheese certified cheese makers must follow strict standards for the cheese starting with what the cows can eat. When ready judges test the cheese by tapping small hammers on the cheese wheels and listening to the sound they make. They then give it the appropriate certification for it’s level of quality.
We got to see them pull the cheese out and put it in the molds. The cheese is large and heavy so they need strong people to handle it. We also got to see the different storage rooms they use for the aging. Each room had it own scent depending on the age of the cheese being stored there. To protect the cheese we had to wear booties, gown and caps during the tour.
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- Brass vat
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- Cheese molds
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- New cheeses
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- Aged cheeses
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- Samples
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- Sample spreads
After the tour we got to try some samples. We were lucky that there were just to 2 of us on the tour. So we could ask whatever questions we had and didn’t have to share our samples. That being said we didn’t finish our samples. One of the most surprising samples was some fresh ricotta. It tasted so different than anything I had had from a store. If I lived near there I would definitely be buying it regularly.
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