Asiago

Asiago is one name covering two cheeses. Asiago Pressato (the fresh one) is made from whole milk, pressed in the mould and ripened for a minimum of 20 days. It is white, elastic, full of irregular holes and mild to the point of sweetness, in wheels of 11 to 15 kilos.

Asiago Stagionato, still widely called Asiago d'Allevo, starts from partly skimmed milk taken from two milkings, is cooked harder in the vat and ripens for at least 60 days. The grades that matter come later: mezzano at four to six months, vecchio past ten, stravecchio past fifteen. The paste turns hard, straw-coloured and granular, and the flavour goes from milky to sharply piquant. Wheels are smaller, 8 to 12 kilos.

The DOP zone is the provinces of Vicenza and Trento in full, plus parts of Padua and Treviso. A separate label, Asiago Prodotto della Montagna, applies to wheels whose milk is produced, made and aged above 600 metres.

Pressato tastes of fresh milk and yoghurt, faintly sweet, with a clean lactic tang and almost no salt to speak of. The texture is springy and moist, closer to a young Fontina or a good Monterey Jack than to anything hard.

Stagionato is a different cheese in the mouth. At four to six months it is firm, buttery and nutty, with a mild bite. Past ten months it dries into a granular, crumbly paste studded with crunchy tyrosine crystals, and the flavour turns sharp, savoury and a little piquant, with a brown-butter note underneath. Even at its oldest it stays milkier and less salty than Parmigiano.

If you have only met the shredded asiago on a bagel, that is a domestic American cheese and not this. The DOP versions are gentler and more distinctly dairy-flavoured at every age.

Match the age to the job. Pressato is for melting and slicing: toasted sandwiches, gratins, savoury tarts, cubed through a farro salad, or stirred into polenta. It releases some water as it melts, so use it with a light hand on pizza.

Mezzano is the everyday middle ground: good on a board, good grated into a frittata, good in cubes with an aperitivo. Vecchio and stravecchio are grating cheeses: they finish a mushroom risotto or a pasta e fagioli with a milkier, less salty note than Parmigiano, and they shave beautifully over rocket and pears.

Bring any Asiago to room temperature before serving on a board. The local combination on the Vicenza plateau is Asiago with sopressa salami on grilled polenta, with a spoonful of mostarda alongside.

A vacuum-sealed wedge keeps at 4 to 8 C until the date printed on the pack, which is the maker's reference, not something you can read off the cheese. Once it is open the two types diverge. Asiago Pressato is a high-moisture cheese: wrap it in waxed paper inside a box that is not airtight, keep it in the vegetable drawer and reckon on about two weeks. Cling film pressed against the surface makes it sweat, and a slick film forms on the cut faces within days.

Asiago Stagionato behaves like a hard cheese. Wrapped in a barely damp cloth and then in paper it holds two to three months, and what it does over that time is dry: the cut face hardens and goes pale, and that layer comes off with a knife before serving. Dry bloom on the rind lifts with a cloth dipped in vinegar. Freezing suits neither type well. The free water in the Pressato tears the structure and it crumbles on thawing; grated Stagionato lasts six months at minus 18 C but loses its finer aromatics, so freeze 200 g pieces and grate as needed.

The rind carries the proof. On the heel of a real wheel the word ASIAGO is stamped over and over, next to the dairy number and the code for the type, all pressed in by the marking bands; mountain wheels add their own wording. Beyond that, tell the two types apart by eye. Pressato has a white to faintly straw paste, elastic, with irregular and obvious holes and a smell of milk and yogurt. Stagionato is compact and darker, its holes small and scattered, and from ten months it carries white tyrosine crystals.

This is the cheese where the name matters most outside Italy. Asiago is protected in the EU and the UK but not in the United States, where domestic factories have used the word for decades: the shredded bags, the deli wedges and the asiago bagel all borrow it, and none of them come from the Veneto. If the label says only asiago, with no DOP seal, no type (Pressato or d Allevo, often sold as fresco and stagionato) and no Italian origin, it is that other cheese. The imported wheel costs several times the domestic block.

In the US, imported Asiago DOP is stocked by Whole Foods, Eataly, Murray's and Italian delis, alongside a great deal of domestic Wisconsin asiago that is a different product. Read the label for 'Asiago DOP' or 'Asiago d'Allevo'. Expect $14-24 per pound for the aged DOP, $8-14 for Pressato, and $7-12 for the domestic version.

In the UK, Waitrose, Ocado and Italian delicatessens carry it at roughly £14-26 per kilo, more for stravecchio and mountain-labelled wheels.

The check is on the heel of the wheel: 'ASIAGO' repeated all around, impressed by the marking mould, with the dairy's number and the type. Wheels marked Prodotto della Montagna cost 20-30% more and are worth it: the milk comes from summer pasture above 600 metres and the difference in flavour is real. In the aged versions, white crunchy specks are tyrosine crystals and a sign of good ripening, not a flaw.

The Altopiano di Asiago, an hour north of Vicenza, is the place. From June to September the malghe (high mountain dairies) sell cheese directly and many serve food, and the Strada del Formaggio Asiago links the best of them on a single day's drive.

In September the town of Asiago hosts Made in Malga, a festival that brings hundreds of Alpine cheesemakers into the main square; the autumn descent of the herds from the high pastures is an event in its own right.

In Trentino, production is quieter but present in the Valsugana and on the Lavarone and Folgaria plateaus. Vicenza's cheese shops carry stravecchi that on the plateau itself are usually only available by order.