2023 Author: Cody Thornton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-24 11:20
In fifth place we have the rare caciocavallo podolico lucano (produced with milk from podolic cows) sold to 70 euros Per kilo. Quarto is a Bitto Storico Valtellinese aged over ten years that comes away for 245 euros Per kilo.
Then there is a Swedish cheese called Moose made only by three cows, to be precise Gullan, Haelga and Juno: to buy a kilo you need over 500 Euros.
In second place there is the precious Stilton, a particular version of the king of English cheeses, creamy and with edible gold inside.
Now put aside pomp and magnificence because the most expensive cheese in the world would not be made without a very humble animal, the female donkey.
Introduced in 2012 at the Belgrade Tourism Fair, it is the most expensive in the world - but also the rarest. Donkey milk is incredibly high in protein, it is not by chance that it is often compared to mother's milk, for a kilo form you need a good 25 liters, all that the animal produces in two years.
Milk price 40 euros per liter, cheese price over 100 euros 1000 euros Per kilo.
It looks like a grainy cheese, not too mature, it is produced in Serbia, where it is known as Pule, made only in the Zasavica nature reserve, If you are wondering why the donkey milk, the cinderella of the stables, is so horribly expensive, you should know that until May 2014 it seemed impossible to turn it into cheese with the rennets used for other types of milk. This is because, simplifying, donkey milk is very different from that of cows, buffaloes, sheep and goats.
The impediment was overcome thanks to the research of an Italian food technologist, Giuseppe Iannella who identified in camel rennet (?!) The product suitable for transforming donkey milk into cheese.
Following the discovery, and the collaboration between Iannella and Davide Borghi, owner of the Agriturismo di Montebaducco in Quattro Castella, in the province of Reggio Emilia, Asinino Reggiano was produced the first cheese in the world with donkey milk, complete with an official presentation at Expo 2015.
One moment, as the most attentive readers will surely have noticed, the accounts do not add up.
How did Serbia manage to present the most expensive cheese in the world in 2012, complete with the endorsement of the prestigious BBC, if the method for making donkey milk was invented by the Italian technologist only in May 2014?
So what is the real "first cheese in the world made with donkey milk"?
The question is debated.
In Serbia, they argue that the first to make donkey milk, challenging chemistry, was Slobodan Simic, director of the "Zasavica" nature reserve.
The Italians presented Asinino Reggiano as the "first cheese in the world made with donkey milk" on an occasion that could not be more public than Expo 2015. Even if Iannella's experiments have raised some perplexities among the workers jobs.
So who has the primacy? And above all, how much does the Asinino Reggiano cost per kilo, of which, despite many attempts, we have not been able to find out the price?