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# 84 OCTOBER 17 , 2016
# 84 October 17
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ITALIAN FLAVORS:
PROVOLONE VALPADANA
By Consorzio Tutela Provolone Valpadana with MiPAAF
Provolone
Valpadana
was created in the region
between the Lambro and
Adda rivers thanks to the
reclamation and canalisation of the waters by the
Cistercian monks. Its creation was the result of an
encounter between the
South Italian cheese culture of spun curd and the
approach to cheese and
dairy found in the Po Valley.
In fact, cheeses known
as “provale” were being
produced in the south
from the Middle Ages
onwards, but they were
nothing more than aged
and smoked caciocavalli. They had a smaller size
(weighing a maximum of 2
Kg), and indeed they couldn’t have been otherwise
given the scarceness of local milk, which did not allow for the production of
between different areas of
the peninsula, and thereThe unification of Italy in fore allowed entrepreneu1861 made it possible rs from the south to settle
to overcome the barriers in the Po Valley who were
large cheeses.
determined to promote
and spread the culture
and consumption of spun
curd cheeses throughou t
the whole of the country.
The great abundance of
raw ingredients in this
area made it possible to
produce larger and larger spun cheeses, and so
the Provolone Valpadana
was created. Fragmentary
but documented notices
attest to the opening of a
cheese factory belonging
to the Margiotta brothers
in Borgo S. Giacomo in
the lower plains of Brescia
in 1870, where very large provole cheeses were
produced.
The term “Provolone” first
appeared in literature in
1871, in the “Vocabolario
di agricoltura di Canevazzi-Mancini” (The Canevazzi-Mancini Vocabulary of
Agriculture), and referred
to large provola. “Valpadana“ was added to the
name ”Provolone" in 1993
as the crowing achieve-
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2016
ment of a centuries-old
tradition that shaped the
characteristics for which
the cheese became known
and appreciated. Finally,
on 21 June 1996, the European Union assigned
Provolone Valpadana the
much-coveted Designated Protection of Origin
(DOP) status.
The product
Provolone
Valpadana
DOP is the spun cheese
that comes in the greatest
variety of shapes and sizes
thanks to the plasticity of
the curd.
It is derived from a family
From then on, a succession of entrepreneurial
southerners moved to the
North, to Milan, Cremona,
Brescia and Piacenza, to
produce spun curd cheese, the consumption of
which continued to become more widespread. In
the early years of the
twentieth century, Gennaro Auricchio came to Padania from San Giuseppe
Vesuviano and moved to
Cremona, where he became the greatest producer
of Provolone Valpadana.
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