Fontina

Fontina is the identity cheese of the whole Valle d'Aosta, its making traditionally traced to around 1270; the name appears in Pantaleone da Confienza's dairy treatise of 1477 and is pictured in a cheese-shop fresco of about 1480 in the castle of Issogne, with a first formal classification in 1887 and protection as a DOP cheese in 1996. By statute it is made only from the raw whole milk of a single milking of Valdostana-breed cows, heated no higher than 36℃ before rennet; the semi-cooked curd is pressed into 8–12kg wheels and aged at least three months in cold, damp caves, the rind brushed and salted as it ripens. Its sweet, grassy, faintly resinous flavour deepens in the summer alpeggio cheeses made on high pasture, where the milk carries the scent of alpine clover.

The paste is supple and yielding, almost waxy when cold, tasting of sweet cream, hazelnut and mountain grass with a gentle lactic tang. Warmed, it turns to a glossy, stringing melt that coats the tongue without a trace of grain.

Because the milk is raw and processed within two hours, its native lactic bacteria and lipase survive to drive ripening; warming only to 36℃ keeps rennet and cultures active without denaturing them, so the casein sets into a soft curd. Cooking the curd expels whey and knits the grains into a semi-hard, high-moisture paste. Over three-plus months, residual rennet and microbial proteases break the casein into peptides and free amino acids that build savoury depth and, crucially, sever the protein network so the cheese flows when heated; lipolysis frees fatty acids for the grassy, nutty notes, while terpenes carried from alpine forage into the milk fat deepen the aroma. Melted near 60℃, the calcium-bridged casein loosens and the fat coalesces into the silk.