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The history of Grana Padano
Vicenza is a cheese-producing land like few others. Among the many products of the province, Grana Padano stands out for its quality and the number of dairies producing it: the most important cheese of northern Italy, its area of production is limited by the natural boundary of the Po and Reno Rivers and more precisely, the left bank of the Po and the right bank of the Reno. Its origins go back to the beginning of the second millennium, in the heart of the Padano plains region. The first protagonists of the art were the Cistercian monks, who began a work of reclamation of exceptional importance following the founding of the Chiaravalle abbacy in 1135 (near Milan), recovering land from the forests and swamps, organising fields and water meadows and giving life to the first cattle farms, providing new impetus to local agriculture. Farmers tending to the newly fertile land soon started to raise cattle. The herds that had previously been left in the wild were now gathered and protected in stalls. The land was converted to pastures, with the production of great quantities of good forage, which made cattle raising convenient, both for the production of milk and for work in the fields. Milk for daily needs was soon available. It therefore became necessary to find a way to conserve milk that had not been consumed. The “recipe” came from inside the walls of the monasteries which made nature and time the protagonists with their unknown biochemical phenomena: a way had been discovered to subject milk to a process that resulted in an unimaginable transformation of a product that was perishable in a few hours’ time, into a food with unexpected organoleptic qualities. A cheese with a hard pasta was born, which conserved through aging the nutritional principles of milk, acquiring with maturation a taste that improved and became more intense, Grana Padano. As early as the Fifteenth century, the fame of Grana cheese was widely consolidated well beyond the confines of the original area of production, to the point that it was already a product of success in the Veneto and in the area of Vicenza in particular, where considerable quantities of milk were available. Documents of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth centuries spoke of commerce, merchants and the price of this cheese, which was present in noble and popular kitchen recipes with increasing frequency.


The Consortium
The Ministry of Agriculture emanated Law n° 125 of 10 April 1954 in order to guarantee and protect Grana Padano, which established severe norms and regulations on the protection of the “typical denominations of origin of cheeses, including Grana Padano”. Following this, on June 18th 1954, thanks to the initiative of the Federation of Dairy Cooperatives, “Federlatte” and of the Association of Dairy and Cheese Industries (Assolatte), the Consortium for the protection of Grana Padano was created, which united all producers, seasoners and merchants of the newly recognised cheese.


How it is produced
In recent centuries the system of processing milk for the production of Grana Padano has changed very little. Even now, cheese is produced from bovine milk from the two daily milkings, which is skimmed, coagulated following opportune heating to a temperature of slightly less than the newly milked product, with the addition of curds from the stomachs of milking calves. In modern cheese factories, the traditional copper vats for heating that look like
upside-down bells can still be seen. Today these vats have a double bottom, where the curds are mashed and then cooked at a temperature of around 53-55° C after the coagulation has taken place. The operation of placing in the forms, salting and aging are similar to traditional procedures. The pasta obtained is inserted in moulds called “fascere” (bands). Two days later, the form will be immerged in a solution of water and salt therefore salting the pasta, for a time that may vary between 15 and 25 days. All of these procedures permit the producers to obtain a cylindrical form with an average weight of 36 kilos after a minimum of nine months of aging, which has a slightly convex crust with flat faces, with a granulose, fragrant pasta that tends to straw yellow in colour and which has an intense and unmistakeable taste. With the progress of science and technology, new procedures have been adopted in the production of Grana Padano over the years, both where raising the cattle and the work of the dairies are concerned. The instruments and efficiency of the process have been perfected, alleviating the difficulties of workers; innovations have been made to adapt the working environment and the phases of processing. All of this has favoured a decided improvement of the product, while consumers’ demands are more readily satisfied.


Quality controls
Since 1996 Grana Padano has been classified as a Protected Designation of Origin (P.D.O.) cheese. As such, producers must comply with the prerequisites foreseen by production regulations, which are contained in a document drawn up for each individual P.D.O. product, by the Consortium responsible for its protection, which codifies the procedures to be followed in the process of transformation - in this case of milk into Grana Padano cheese, and the characteristics that the product must possess. The primary objective is to offer consumers the history and tradition, but above all high, certified quality. In order to guarantee that every producer respects the rules set by the regulations for the production of Grana Padano and that the cheese corresponds to the standards foreseen, controls are performed from the stall to the sales outlet, by an authorised organism created for the purpose (the CSQA), which must also perform the P.D.O. certification for the Grana Padano, as well as by the Consortium for the protection of Grana Padano itself which also marks the cheese corresponding to the requirements with a fire brand. Additionally, a clear procedure makes it possible to trace the product back through the chain of production and distribution, in order to guarantee consumers and remove eventual problems that emerge. All this assures us that what we eat is truly Grana Padano cheese.