Puzzone di Moena

Puzzone di Moena is a semi-cooked raw cow's milk cheese from the val di Fassa, val di Fiemme and Primiero valleys in Trentino, in the Italian Dolomites. Wheels weigh 9 to 13 kilos and measure 34 to 42 centimetres across, with a straight side about 9 to 12 centimetres high.

What separates it from every other Italian mountain cheese is the rind. Instead of being left to dry, it is washed and rubbed with warm, lightly salted water at regular intervals: every two or three days at first, then weekly, for the entire ageing period. The permanent damp surface grows a smear of bacteria that break down proteins and release sulphur compounds. The rind turns ochre and tacky, the paste directly under it softens into a darker, more yielding band, and the cheese acquires the smell that gives it its name.

Minimum ageing is 90 days; most wheels are sold between five and eight months. There is also a malga version, made only in summer from high-pasture milk and aged longer, which carries the name of the individual alpine dairy on the label.

The DOP was granted in 2014, though the technique in these valleys is documented from the nineteenth century, when the cooperative dairies of Fiemme and Fassa organised production. Output is small, a few thousand wheels a year, and essentially all of it is eaten in northern Italy.

The gap between the nose and the palate is the whole story. The smell is farmyard, wet cellar, cured meat, something between a ripe Munster and the inside of a cave. The taste is far gentler than that: sweet milk underneath, a clean salinity, a savoury depth from the rind, and a finish that suggests hazelnuts and mountain herbs rather than anything barnyard.

Texture is elastic and dense, closer to a young Alpine wheel than to the runny washed-rind cheeses of France. The band under the rind is softer and much more intense; the centre stays firm, milky and sweet even in an eight-month wheel.

If your reference is Époisses, expect a third of the pungency on the palate and none of the spoonable ooze. If your reference is Taleggio, expect the same family of flavours with far more grip and a longer finish. Malga wheels add a green, herbal top note that comes directly from the summer pasture.

In the valleys it goes on polenta and nothing else needs to happen. Cut thick slices, lay them over hot yellow polenta and let the residual heat melt them, or slide the plate under a hot grill for a minute until the surface blisters. The cheese is the sauce.

It is also grated into canederli, the Trentino bread dumplings, alongside speck, melted into a mountain fonduta with milk and egg yolk to pour over boiled potatoes, or stirred into risotto off the heat, in small quantities, because it dominates easily.

On a board, serve it at room temperature with the rind on: that band under the rind is the best part of the wheel. Rhododendron or fir honeydew honey, mostarda and walnuts all balance it rather than hiding it.

Two practical notes. First, it will perfume everything in your fridge, butter and eggs included, so keep it in a sealed box. Second, cold Puzzone gives you less than half of what it has; take it out thirty minutes before serving.

A wedge runs three or four weeks in the vegetable drawer of the refrigerator, and the container matters more here than with almost any other cheese, because a washed rind scents everything around it: butter and eggs will take it on within a day. A rigid box with a lid, or two layers of waxed paper with a barely damp cloth against the rind, keeps that in and keeps the surface supple. Plastic film pressed on it is the one thing to avoid, since it seals the moisture in and pushes the surface towards ammonia.

The rind is alive and goes on working even at fridge temperature, so a piece bought today is stronger in three weeks than it is tonight; that is the cheese doing what it does rather than a fault. The cut face dries and darkens, and a millimetre scraped off resets it. Freezing is out: the paste crumbles and the rind loses the surface flora it depends on. Take it out half an hour before serving, always, because cold shuts it down completely. The label date and the dairy are the reference.

The rind carries the identity. It should be ochre going towards brown, damp and faintly tacky to the touch, never dry or cracked, because that surface is the result of months of washing and a dry rind means the routine was thin or stopped early. Cut across, the paste is compact and elastic, white to pale straw, with sparse irregular eyes, and there is almost always a softer, darker band a centimetre or two under the rind where the surface bacteria worked hardest. That band is the most flavoured part of the wheel. The denomination is branded on the heel, and the rarer alpine wheels also name their malga.

It should smell pungent but clean, of cellar, damp woodland and washed rind; a flat ammonia note means it has travelled further than the style intends, and no smell at all means it is not this cheese. Its relatives abroad are the washed-rind family: Taleggio, Époisses, Munster, Reblochon, Limburger. Puzzone is firmer than any of them, a semi-hard wheel of around ten kilos, and it carries DOP status under the double name Puzzone di Moena and Spretz Tzaorì.

Outside Italy this is a specialist purchase. In the US, importers of Alpine and Italian mountain cheeses list it occasionally: Murray's, Formaggio Kitchen, Eataly and serious regional cheesemongers are the realistic places to ask, at roughly 22 to 32 dollars per pound. In the UK, Italian delicatessens and washed-rind specialists carry it sporadically at about 30 to 45 pounds per kilo.

Ask your cheesemonger to source it rather than hunting shelves, and ask for the age. A three-month wheel and an eight-month wheel are different cheeses, and the malga version (summer milk, longer ageing, alp name on the label) is different again and dearer.

When it arrives, judge the rind. It should be ochre to brown, damp and slightly tacky. A dry, cracked rind means the washing stopped early and the aroma never developed. A sharp ammonia smell, as opposed to a strong farmyard one, means it has gone too far.

In Trentino itself, the cooperative dairies of Predazzo-Moena and Cavalese sell every ageing directly at 16 to 24 euros a kilo, which is roughly half the export price.

Moena sits at the mouth of the val di Fassa, an hour and a half from Trento and inside the Dolomites proper. The cooperative dairy shared by Predazzo and Moena has a public shop selling the full range; the val di Fiemme dairy in Cavalese is the second address worth the stop.

For a cooked version, Malga Panna above Moena is a fine-dining restaurant that treats the valley's cheeses seriously. For the elemental version, cheese with polenta and a glass of something local, head for the malghe around the San Pellegrino and Costalunga passes, both of which are on classic Dolomite driving routes.

Late summer is the moment. When the herds come down from the high pastures the valleys hold the desmontegada festivals, Moena's Gran Festa da d'Istà among them, and the whole season's malga cheese reaches the market at once.

The area is Ladin-speaking, one of Italy's three officially protected minority languages, and the cheese is one of the more edible ways into that culture: ask for Spretz Tzaorì and watch the conversation change.