Puzzone di Moena

The washed-rind method that defines Puzzone was, by local account, developed by Val di Fassa herdsmen after the First World War, who bathed the ripening wheels in warm salt water to seal the rind and intensify the flavour. For centuries the cheese had no fixed name; the nickname 'puzzone', dialect for 'big stinker', was coined half in jest during a 1974 broadcast on RAI's Trento regional radio and stuck, becoming the official name. The cheese earned Italian DOP protection in 2014. Wheels made in summer on the high malga pastures and stamped with an 'M' are safeguarded as a Slow Food Presidium. Historically it was a humble seasoning cheese that could lift a plate of polenta or boiled potatoes.

On the tongue Puzzone is soft and yielding, almost spreadable near the rind, with a warm, lingering pungency that fills the nose before the palate catches up. The paste tastes of mountain butter, hay and ripe fruit, edged with a salty, faintly ammoniacal bite from the washed rind; the finish is long, savoury and unmistakably barnyard. It is a cheese that rewards dark bread, polenta or a robust red wine.

The pungency is the work of the washed rind. Bathing the wheel in warm salt water suppresses unwanted moulds while fostering a sticky biofilm of salt-tolerant coryneform bacteria and yeasts, chiefly Brevibacterium linens, that colonise the surface. These microbes break down the cheese's proteins and amino acids from the outside in, releasing ammonia and volatile sulfur compounds such as methanethiol that give the cheese its notorious smell. Meanwhile the semi-cooked curd, heated to about 44°C in the making, expels enough whey to set a supple semi-hard paste, while months of slow proteolysis soften its texture and deepen its savour.