Parma

Ric and I are back from a great weekend in Parma! We ate some amazing food and really enjoyed our tours of the cheese and balsamic vinegar factories (although they were a little small to really be called factories). A couple things we learned from the cheese place:

1. Only natural ingredients are used to make Parmigiano-Reggiano througout the entire process. Even the equipment is cleaned with all natural ingredients (no chemicals). The cows don't get any horomoes or antibiotics or anything to increase their production. And all that goes into the cheese is milk, which comes freshly eash day from different local farms, whey, and enzymes from a cow's stomach. That's it.

2. The process is VERY closely monitored by the Parmigiano-Reggiano consortium and the only official cheese comes from a D.O.P region where the consortium has complete control. The cheese comes from thousands of producers, large and small, but the only way to tell which one a specific wheel came from is by a number stamped on it. There's no other branding. Most people find their favorite maker and buy it directly from a "factory" like the one we visited.

3. The one we visited is considered a medium sized maker and they produce about 10 wheels per day.

4. The quality of the cheese changes throughout the year becuase the milk changes - it's fattier in the winter when the calves need more nurition and more watery in the summer when they need hydrating. Of course nothing is added to the milk to balance this out, so the cheese is just different based on when it's made. Best to look at the rind for cheese made in the winter (each wheel has the month and year it was made imprinted on the side).

5. The cheese maker we met was celebrating his 49th birthday and had been doing this for 31 years (since he was 18). He works every single day, including weekends, and in the past 5 years has only had 5 days off. They're having a hard time finding young Italians to continue these jobs becuase they're so intense, so many of the people learning are Indian immigrants who are carrying on the tradition, which is centuries old (they still follow a recipe that traces back to the 1100's).

The vinegar place we went was also very interesting. True balsamic vinegar (which Modena is most well known for, not Parma) is also controlled by a consortium. They taste it all and determine whether it passes and if it gets a red, silver or gold label. The gold stuff, which is the best, costs about 80 euro per tiny bottle. But you only use a couple drops. It's almost more like syrup than what you'd think of as balsamic vinegar. And like the cheese, there's no branding to differentiate the makers. It all goes into the same bottles and the consortium does the bottling itself.

Parma itself was a beauitful city. The people were very stylish in that great Italian way that looks totally effortless. Everywhere we ate was delicious. And people were so friendly (especially to the big pregnant lady). The hotel where we stayed had a beauitful courtyard and looked almost like an apartment building.

On Sunday, as we headed back to the airport, we stopped in a town called Soranga to eat at a restaurant that Ric had read about. They didn't speak a word of English, but Ric did a great job communicating and by the end they actually thought we spoke Italian! It made us both want to do a better job actually learning (or re-learning) the language.

As always, we leave wishing that one day we'll have a house somewhere in Northern Italy where we can go for family trips. We can dream... :)

All of our pictures are up on Flickr as usual, but here are some of the highlights.

Balsamic vinegar aging. Some of it ages for more than 30 years, although there's a group in Modena that's considering adding a new category for vinegar ages 75-100 years!



At the cheese maker's



The cheese maker putting the cheese into the molds where it will sit for a couple hours to settled, let the liquid drain out, and then be put into steel molds for a couple days before taking a nice salt bath.



Coming out of the vat of whey, pulled up in linen cloths





The "factory"... each vat makes 2 wheels and there are 5 vats total



Where the magic happens...



Salt bath



Loving the cheese tour



A few pics in Parma









Our family run hotel, right next to the Doumo.



Lunch place in Soranga