Our 2023 holiday was over three weeks long. One of the first places we visited (and one of the first I had put on my list of places to visit) was Caseificio BIO Reggiani, an organic parmesan dairy near Modena.
The dairy was started in 1984 by a couple with five cows, which she milked by hand. Today's it's an enormous enterprise with over 500 cows, still run by the same couple (although technically they have retired) but with the help of many staff. They started going organic in 2005, and they now operate as a closed circle, producing all their own stock feed and dealing with their own waste, with a methane plant providing electricity.
We booked for a 9:00am tour in English. Booking for 8am or 9am means you get to see the cheese being made, and maybe even the cows being milked. We missed the milking, but saw every stage of the cheese production.
Cheese production starts with the cows, who live in airy sheds with big fans, from which the cows can access the fields at will on fine days.
The cows are milked twice a day, and the morning milk (full fat content)
is added to the milk from the previous evening and rennet is added.
Once the curds form, they are strained through cheesecloth.
And placed in plastic molds and weighted...
After a day they are transferred to metal molds with embossed interiors to create their official Parmesan markings.
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