- Hi, guys. This is
Claudia, and today I'm gonna take you to see how Gorgonzola
cheese is made in Italy. I'm in Trecate in the Piedmont region, which is one of the
only two Italian regions together with Lombardy where
this cheese can be made, and this is one of the only 29 dairies in the world that can produce this cheese. The Gorgonzola industry is
worth over $800 million. Almost 5 million wheels
are produced each year, and production is confined
to this small area only. Gorgonzola cheese has a
centuries-old history, and it is still done using the same ingredients and techniques
that it was decades ago. Even machines like this one
used to stir the curd are designed to recreate human
movements as gently as possible. Its beautiful marbled interior is given by Penicillium roqueforti, a fungus that is used to ripen the cheese. And this is why, in fact,
blue cheese is called so. - Claudia: Gorgonzola cheese
is made with unskimmed pasteurized cow's milk,
and it can either be mild and creamy or hard and pungent depending on how long it is left to age. The two kinds are easily
distinguishable by the color of their veins: blue in the creamy and
green in the pungent. Claudia: Penicillium
roqueforti, the fungus, is added to milk at the very beginning
of the production process in a big cauldron together with
enzymes, rennet, and yeasts. In about 20 minutes, milk becomes curd and can be transferred into molds. Each wheel is marked with the
dairy's identification number. You can see number 60 here, that's Caseificio Si
Invernizzi we visited. Here, between 450 and 500 Gorgonzola wheels are made every day. To help the curd settle,
wheels are turned four times then left to rest overnight. Then, they are salted a couple of times. At this stage, they weigh about 18 kilos, that's 40 pounds, but
this number will drop to 12 kilos, 26 pounds, at the end of the aging process as
excess whey is released. The salting rooms are warm and humid. This is also to favor the activity of yeasts inside the cheese. Mild Gorgonzola wheels stay for three days and hard Gorgonzola for five. Then, they are moved
again into a cold room where they're punctured
100 times on each side. This is to allow oxygen into the cheese for it to grow its signature blue veins. All Gorgonzolas at
Caseificio Si Invernizzi are punctured with a machine, but some other in-house cheeses are
still punctured by hand. After this step, the
cheese is left to age. It takes two months for
the blue creamy Gorgonzola and three months for
the green pungent one. The color difference is pretty evident, but do they really taste different? The dairy set up a little cheese tasting so that we could try them both. That's amazing, my God.
It almost doesn't feel like you're biting into cheese. It just melts in your mouth. Oh, wow, they are so different.
It's crazy. You know? I mean, you can tell from the texture that this is harder and
this is creamier, but this is much, much stronger.
It has a stronger bite. After trying Gorgonzola on its own, in-house chef Gianpiero Cravero wanted to show me how
versatile the cheese is, so he cooked some squid ink
spaghetti with both cheeses. - Your pasta. - Mmmm. Wow. The cheese
tastes very strong, but I think the combination
with the squid ink is great. I mean, color-wise
of course it's amazing because black and white,
they're like opposites, right? So you can really see the cheese in there and its sort of creamy
texture on the pasta. Gorgonzola cheese is protected
by the European Union by the Protected Designation
of Origin Scheme. This means that any cheese
labeled "Gorgonzola" must meet a particular set of standards and is subject to quality checks. It's also wrapped in a
signature aluminum foil.
My favorite is the mountain piccante
Ugh is this SFW because damn