Robiola

The word robiola covers two quite different things. At one end sits Robiola di Roccaverano DOP, a lactic-set cheese from nineteen villages in the Alta Langa, made from raw milk that must be at least fifty per cent goat, with cow and sheep milk making up the rest. At the other end sit industrial robiole, almost always pasteurised cow's milk, sold in small 100-gram blocks and eaten as a mild spread.

The traditional shape is a low cylinder, about eleven centimetres across and three high, weighing between 250 and 400 grams. The paste is white and soft with no holes; the rind, where there is one, is thin and wrinkled, and on aged wheels it develops grey moulds and an ammoniacal edge.

Two explanations of the name have coexisted for centuries: one from Latin rubeola, for the reddish tone an aged rind takes on, the other from Robbio, a town in Lombardy's Lomellina. Neither has been settled.

Roccaverano earned DOP status in 1996, and a Slow Food Presidium protects the strictest version: raw whole goat's milk, one hundred per cent.

Fresh, it tastes of clean acidity and cool milk, with the goat note present but restrained, nothing like the sharp barnyard flavour of an aged chèvre. The texture is fondant rather than springy: it collapses on the tongue instead of resisting.

After ten to twenty days of ageing the character changes. The layer just under the rind goes almost liquid, the flavour concentrates into something nuttier and saltier, and the goat comes forward. Past a month the wheels turn genuinely pungent, with grey mould, an ammoniacal top note and a peppery finish that surprises anyone who met robiola as a mild supermarket block.

The cow's-milk robiole of Lombardy taste sweeter, creamier and simpler, closer to a thicker crescenza than to anything from the Langhe.

Serve it at room temperature, always. Take it out of the fridge thirty minutes ahead; cold robiola tastes of nothing because the fat is still set.

On a board it needs almost nothing: rye or plain wheat bread, a spoon of chestnut honey, and toasted Piedmont hazelnuts. Cugnà, the local grape-must mostarda of the Langhe, is the regional pairing, and fig or red-onion jam does the same job.

In cooking, its useful property is that it melts smoothly without stringing or splitting. A spoonful stirred into a risotto off the heat gives a better finish than butter and cream and less fat; folded into a ravioli filling with chard or braised leeks it adds creaminess without water.

With pasta it suits autumn vegetables: pumpkin, leeks, late radicchio, cavolo nero. Add it off the heat and let the residual warmth do the work.

Heavily aged wheels change role entirely: crumble or grate them as you would a pungent cheese, or keep them submerged in olive oil with peppercorns and thyme.

One underrated local combination: fresh robiola, salted Ligurian anchovies and plain bread. The anchovies came over the old salt roads, and the pairing is older than it looks.

Fresh robiola has a short life: five or six days in the fridge, kept in its own paper rather than cling film, which stops it breathing and pushes it sour. It wants the least cold shelf, 6 to 8 C, and half an hour out before serving, because when the fat is chilled solid the aromas do not register at all. A sealed tub runs to the date printed on it, which belongs to the dairy.

Aged wheels last three or four weeks and go on changing the whole time: the rind dries and tightens, the layer beneath it turns translucent and fondant, the paste softens from the outside in and the ammonia note strengthens as it goes. Turn them every two or three days and keep them in a box that does not seal airtight. They do not freeze, because the lactic structure breaks and thawing leaves separated whey and a grainy mass. The traditional route for aged wheels is a glass jar under extra virgin olive oil with peppercorns, bay and thyme, fully submerged, where they hold for months and concentrate further.

In a fresh Roccaverano the paste is a stark white, because goats do not convert beta-carotene, and the surface is faintly wrinkled and moist rather than wet. The little wheel has to hold its own shape: one slumping on the counter has been kept badly. On the palate the fresh version has clean acidity and a restrained goat note that grows as it ages, while a flat, purely milky taste points to pasteurised milk or the minimum goat percentage in the blend. On aged wheels a grey and blue-grey bloom is normal and wanted, and a faint ammonia note is part of the type.

For the marks, Robiola di Roccaverano DOP carries a label with the logo and the dairy number, and the Slow Food Presidium adds its own on wheels made from one hundred percent goat milk. Any robiola that does not declare the species is cow milk. Abroad the word travels loosely: robiola-style and Italian-style robiola are legitimate names with no connection to Piedmont, and most foreign delis stock the mild industrial squares of cow and sheep milk, which cost a fraction of a DOP goat wheel.

Roccaverano DOP is hard to find outside Italy, largely because it is a raw-milk cheese with a short life. In the UK, specialist cheesemongers such as those in Borough Market and a handful of Italian importers list it intermittently at roughly 30 to 38 pounds per kilo. In the US, the raw-milk ageing rules make the fresh version essentially unavailable; aged wheels appear occasionally at Italian specialists and Eataly at 28 to 40 dollars a pound.

Cow's-milk robiola travels much better and is stocked by most Italian delicatessens abroad. It is a genuine product with its own Lombard tradition, just not the Alta Langa cheese.

Read the label for the milk species. If it does not say capra or goat, the cheese is cow's milk. The DOP mark carries the dairy's number, and Presidium wheels state the one-hundred-per-cent goat's milk version explicitly.

In Italy, buy it in Alta Langa itself at 18 to 24 euros a kilo direct from the farms, or from cheesemongers in Alba, Asti and Turin at 20 to 32. Spring, when the goats are back on pasture, is when the milk is most aromatic.

Roccaverano and its neighbours in the Alta Langa: Olmo Gentile, Serole, Monastero Bormida, Spigno Monferrato. These are very small villages with a handful of farms selling at the door, and the cheese is made early in the morning, so visits happen at dairy hours, not tourist hours.

Roccaverano holds an annual event dedicated to its DOP, and several producers open to visitors around it.

In Alba and Asti, the town cheesemongers carry both the Roccaverano and the local cow's-milk robiole, and any decent osteria will have it on the cheese trolley alongside Castelmagno and the tome.

Turin is the easiest place to find a full range: the stalls of the Porta Palazzo market and the delicatessens around via Lagrange stock it regularly. Milan's specialist cheese shops keep it too, usually in the aged form, which survives transport better.

Over in Lombardy, the Lomellina towns of Robbio, Mortara and Vigevano make their own cow's-milk robiole, a different and far less celebrated cheese with an equally long history, and one of the two candidate origins of the name.