Asiago DOP

What is Asiago DOP Cheese?

Asiago takes its name from the plateau above Vicenza, where its origin is conventionally traced to around the year 1000. Sheep dominated the Sette Comuni plateau at first, giving both cheese and wool for the textile trades of the Alto Vicentino valleys. Cattle gradually replaced the flocks after about 1500. Production later spread into the foothills, the neighbouring plains and the Trentino mountain dairies, largely because the plateau emptied out when it became a front line in the First World War.

Only the long-aged d'allevo was made until the 1940s, when dairies around Lusiana and Conco began producing a shorter-aged version pressed under manual or hydraulic presses. The cheese won Denominazione Tipica status in 1955 and protected designation of origin on 21 December 1978. A consortium followed in Vicenza in June 1979, founded by 56 cooperative dairies. Asiago is now the fourth most-produced Italian cow's milk DOP cheese, and more than 95 percent of Italians know it.

The milk must come from herds inside the production zone: all of the provinces of Vicenza and Trento, eleven municipalities in the province of Padua, and a defined strip of the province of Treviso. Pressato is made from whole milk heated to 35 °C with specific cultures and liquid rennet. The curd is cut to walnut size, cooked again at about 45 °C, dry-salted, pressed for roughly four hours, dried two or three days in a room called the frescura, brined, then matured 20 to 40 days. D'allevo uses two milkings, morning and evening, one skimmed by natural creaming; the curd is broken to rice-grain size with a tool called a spino and cooked twice, at 40 °C and then 47 °C.

Pressato wheels run 30 to 40 cm across and about 15 cm tall, at 11 to 15 kg. The rind is thin and elastic, the paste soft and buttery, white to pale straw, with irregular eyes, and the taste stays sweet, close to cream and milk straight from the udder. D'allevo wheels are smaller, 30 to 36 cm and 9 to 12 kg, with a thin hard rind, amber in the mezzano and brown in the older grades. Mezzano, 3 to 5 months old, is compact but still fairly soft and sweet. Vecchio, at 9 to 18 months, is hard and decisive, tending to piquant. Stravecchio, two years or more, turns very hard and grainy with an intense, penetrating flavor.

The fresh type serves as a table cheese or an ingredient in many recipes, and suits light fresh whites, soft rosés, or a dry sparkling wine when it is put out as an aperitivo. Aged wheels want structured reds, often Veneto DOC wines such as Bardolino Superiore or Pinot Nero from Vicenza. Fresh Asiago keeps poorly, so store the slices in film at 8 to 9 °C and eat them soon; stravecchio holds well wrapped in cloth, even at warmer temperatures.