Ossolano

Ossolano is a semi-cooked cow's milk cheese from the province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola in northern Piedmont. Wheels are small by alpine standards: 5 to 7 kilos, 29 to 32 centimetres across, with a straight side 6 to 9 centimetres high. The rind is smooth and straw-yellow, browning with age; the paste is firm and elastic with small, sparse eyes.

The specification allows two designations. Plain Ossolano is made year-round in dairies on the valley floor and in the side valleys. Ossolano d'Alpe is made only during the summer transhumance, in dairies at altitude, with the specification pointing above 1,400 metres, and carries the name of the alp on the label, which is the piece of information that actually matters here. Reputation in the Ossola attaches to individual alps, not to brands.

Minimum ageing is 60 days for both. In practice the valley version sells at two to four months, the alpine version at three to twelve, by which point it has developed tyrosine crystals and a much longer finish.

The DOP is recent for a cheese this old. Before 2017 anything made in the province could be sold as ossolano, and the denomination exists mostly to protect the alpine version, which is where the value sits.

Sweet, buttery and clean, with a nuttiness that builds with age and none of the sharpness people expect from mountain cheese. The valley version tastes of good milk and cooked hay; the texture is firm but yielding, with a slight springiness.

The alpine version is where it gets interesting. Cows eating high-summer pasture put herbs into the milk, and the cheese carries a green, almost alpine-flower note over the butter. At eight months to a year it turns savoury and deep, with hazelnut, dried mushroom and a faint meatiness, plus crystals that crunch.

The honest positioning: less powerful than Bitto, less rich and molten than Fontina, more herbal than Asiago. It sits in the middle of the Italian alpine range, which is exactly why you can eat a lot of it. If you know Swiss Alpkäse or a young Comté, you are close.

Young Ossolano melts well and belongs on polenta. The local dish is polenta concia ossolana: cornmeal polenta finished off the heat with mountain butter and cubes of cheese, stirred until it turns glossy. It also works in a potato frittata, folded into gnocchi with brown butter, or melted into a simple fonduta with milk and egg yolk over boiled potatoes.

The universal alpine-cheese rule applies: keep it off direct heat. Above about 70C the fat separates and you are left with something rubbery. Add it off the flame or use a bain-marie.

Past six months, and particularly in the alpine version, it becomes a board cheese. Serve it in shards at room temperature with chestnut honey (chestnuts are a local crop), walnuts and pears. Bilberry or raspberry compote from the side valleys is the local move on older wheels, and it works better than it sounds.

Grated in small quantities over barley soup or a risotto, an alpine wheel of a year carries the entire dish.

Fridge, in the vegetable drawer, wrapped in a barely damp cloth and then in greaseproof paper. A young piece holds about three weeks, a long-aged alpine piece a good two months, drying and firming steadily as it goes.

Avoid film pressed against the cheese: it smothers the rind and leaves the cut face slippery. When the cut surface dries, scrape off a millimetre and carry on. Dry white or green bloom on the rind comes away with a cloth dipped in vinegar or white wine; pink, black or damp growth is a different matter and a question for whoever sold you the piece.

Whole wheels live in a cellar at 8 to 12°C (46 to 54°F) with high humidity, turned every couple of weeks, the rind rubbed with oil if it starts to dry and crack. Freezing is not the route, because the semi-cooked paste flakes and turns floury on thawing. Half an hour out of the fridge before serving opens up the aromatics.

Certified wheels carry the denomination mark and the producer code on the side. Alpine wheels also name the alp itself, and that is the line that matters most, because reputation in the Ossola is built alp by alp rather than dairy by dairy.

The paste should be compact and elastic, ivory when young and straw yellow when mature, with small sparse eyes. The rind is thin and even; a thickened rind points to an ageing room that ran too dry. Cut it and it should not crumble. In long-aged alpine wheels the first tyrosine crystals crunch under the teeth, which is a sign of the ageing rather than a fault.

Two practical warnings for a counter abroad. Ossolano cheese written in lower case on a sign does not mean Ossolano DOP, and the valleys make many excellent tome that are not the denomination. And if someone offers a Bettelmatt as Ossolano d'Alpe, or the reverse, the price settles it: Bettelmatt costs well over double.

Realistically, this is a cheese you buy in Piedmont. Total DOP output is small and almost all of it is eaten between the Ossola, Lake Maggiore and western Lombardy. In the US it surfaces only through specialist importers and the more adventurous cheese counters, at roughly 20 to 30 dollars per pound; in the UK, Italian delicatessens and alpine specialists list it occasionally at 26 to 40 pounds per kilo.

Ask a good cheesemonger to source it, and ask specifically whether it is the alpine designation. Ossolano d'Alpe carries the name of the alp on the rind or the label: that is the whole point of buying it, and a wheel without one is the valley version at the valley price.

In the Ossola itself, buy at the Saturday market in Domodossola, at the valley dairies, or directly from the alps in summer, where the price is 16 to 22 euros a kilo for the standard version and 25 to 38 for the alpine one.

One warning for visitors: a sign reading 'formaggio ossolano' in lower case does not mean the DOP. Plenty of excellent unprotected tommes are made in the province, and they should not cost the same.

Domodossola is the gateway, and it is easier to reach than its remoteness suggests: it is a stop on the Simplon line from Switzerland, ninety minutes from Milan and directly connected to Brig and Bern. Its arcaded medieval centre holds a Saturday market where producers come down from the side valleys.

Upstream, the Val Formazza runs to Riale, the last Walser village before the Swiss border, and to the Toce waterfall, one of the highest in the Alps and released on scheduled summer days. These are the pastures that make the valley's finest cheeses, Bettelmatt included. The Walser were German-speaking colonists who settled the high valley heads from the thirteenth century, and their language and building style survive here, and the cheese-making technique came with them.

Alpe Devero, above Baceno, is a high plateau reachable by car and then on foot, with working dairies through the summer that sell at the door. In the Val Vigezzo, Santa Maria Maggiore is the prettiest village and has good shops.

In late September the valleys hold the desalpe, when the herds come down from the high pastures wearing bells and flowers, and the whole season's cheese reaches the market at once.