Fontina

Fontina is a semi-cooked, pressed cow's milk cheese made only in the Aosta Valley, the small Alpine region wedged between France, Switzerland and Piedmont. Two rules in the DOP specification explain everything about it: the milk must come from a single milking, and it must be in the vat within two hours, raw and still warm. Nothing else on a cheese counter is made that way.

The wheels are cylindrical with a concave heel, 7.5 to 12 kg, 35-45 cm across and 7-10 cm tall, with a minimum of 45% fat in dry matter. One wheel takes roughly 100 litres of milk. The paste runs from ivory in winter to deep straw in summer, elastic, with small sparse eyes; the rind is thin, washed and brushed by hand to a brown-orange finish.

The name is the problem. Outside the EU 'fontina' is not a protected word, so it sits on Danish, Swedish and generic Italian cheeses that share nothing with the original. Real Fontina carries one mark: the Matterhorn stamp pressed into the heel of the wheel, with the dairy's number beside it. Italian recognition came in 1955, the producers' Consorzio in 1957, EU DOP status in 1996.

Mild but never bland, and that is the trick of it. The first note is warm milk and butter, then hay and boiled chestnut, then a faint hazelnut finish and a small savoury tug from the washed rind. There is no sharpness and no salt spike; a good wheel tastes sweet in the way fresh cream is sweet.

The alpage version, made above 1,700 metres between June and September, tastes noticeably different: grassier, more herbal, longer on the finish, with a yellower paste from the summer pasture.

The texture is supple and semi-soft. It gives under a knife without crumbling and without the squeak of a young cheddar. Melted, it turns to cream rather than strings, which is why it belongs in a sauce and not on a pizza.

Fonduta valdostana is the dish this cheese was made for, and it is easier than Swiss fondue. Take 400 g of Fontina, cut off the rind, slice it thin and cover it with about 250 ml of whole milk for two to three hours, or overnight in the fridge. Melt it in a double boiler with 30 g of butter, then take it off the direct heat and whisk in three or four egg yolks. Keep it under 70 °C: past that it splits, goes stringy and turns grainy. No wine, no kirsch, no garlic: that is a different country's recipe.

Serve it over soft polenta, on crostini, or with shaved white truffle if the season and the budget allow.

Beyond fonduta: dice it into hot polenta for polenta concia; stuff it with cooked ham into a pocket cut in a veal chop, bread it and fry it in butter for costoletta alla valdostana; layer it with stale bread, savoy cabbage and broth and bake it for seupa à la Valpellenentse. It also makes an unusually good grilled cheese sandwich.

What it is not good for: grating over pasta, where you want a hard cheese, and any dish where you need the cheese to stretch in ropes. Fontina goes creamy, not stringy.

Fontina belongs in the vegetable drawer of the fridge, between 4 and 8 °C, wrapped in greaseproof paper or the waxed cheese paper from the counter. Never press cling film directly against the paste: the cheese breathes, and sealed in plastic it develops an ammonia smell within days. A wedge with its rind intact holds three or four weeks that way, and it keeps changing while it does. The cut face dries and takes on a white veil, and the paste behind it firms up and tastes more concentrated. Scraping a millimetre off the face brings the original surface back.

Green or black growth on the paste itself is a different change from that veil on a cut face, and there the date on the pack and the cheesemonger who sold it are the reference. Fontina does not freeze: the paste flakes apart and releases water in a fonduta. If there is no alternative, freeze only the share meant for cooking, cut into cubes, for no more than two months. Take it out of the fridge a full hour before serving, because straight from the cold it says almost nothing.

Look for the Matterhorn stamp branded into the heel of the wheel with the dairy number beside it, and it is the only mark that decides the question. The rind is thin, compact and brown orange, and it is never waxed. Red or yellow wax means fontal, or one of the northern European and Argentine cheeses that borrow the name: mild, springy, built for melting. In American shops the word fontina on its own is usually one of those; the label to look for reads Fontina Val d'Aosta DOP.

The paste runs from ivory in winter to deep straw in summer alpine milk, with a few small scattered eyes. It should be elastic under the knife, giving way without crumbling and without bouncing back. It smells of milk, hay and boiled chestnut, with hazelnut on the finish. Two things to walk past: pre wrapped slices with no rind, where the stamp cannot be checked, and wedges with a white, dried band along the cut face, cut weeks ago. It is fair to ask how long the wheel has been open. Expect roughly $20 to $28 a pound or £6 to £9 for 200 g.

In the US, ask for it by the full name, Fontina Val d'Aosta DOP, at a real cheese counter: Eataly, Murray's, Di Bruno Bros, igourmet and better Whole Foods counters carry it, and several importers ship cut-to-order wedges. Expect $16-26 per pound, or $28-38 for alpage. In the UK it turns up at La Fromagerie, Lina Stores, I Camisa and Italian delicatessens, roughly £24-36 per kilo.

Buy a wedge with the rind still attached. The rind is where the Matterhorn stamp lives, and without it you have no way of checking what you bought. If the cheese is coated in red or yellow wax, it is not Fontina DOP, whatever the label says.

Check the cut face: it should be even in colour and slightly moist. A dry, chalky edge means the wheel was opened weeks ago. Ask when it was cut, because a good counter will know.

The Aosta Valley is small and reachable: two hours from Turin, three from Milan, and the train and motorway follow the same valley floor. Aosta itself is the base, but the cheese is best chased into the side valleys: seupa à la Valpellenentse in Valpelline, polenta concia in the refuges above Cogne and Valgrisenche, the stuffed veal chop in the trattorie of Courmayeur and Gressoney.

At Valpelline the Consorzio ages its wheels in a converted tunnel and runs a visitor centre, which is the fastest way to understand what 80 days at 8 °C and 95% humidity actually does.

In summer, alpine dairies above 1,800 metres sell directly to walkers, and that is where the alpage wheels come from. In autumn the Modon d'Or competition judges the best of them; on 30 and 31 January the Fiera di Sant'Orso fills Aosta with craft and food stalls.