Slow Food’s international event, Cheese finished up on Monday, wrapping up four days of markets, taste workshops, conferences, dinners and festivities – all with this great food at center-stage. The biennial event brings Slow Food’s network of artisan dairy producers, cheesemongers, herders and experts to the streets of Bra – a historic cheese aging center for northwestern Italy and home to the association’s headquarters.
An estimated 250,000 visitors came to this edition of Cheese, animating the city from early morning till late at night. While curious shoppers sampled diverse dairy products on display by exhibitors and Presidia, and visitors sunk their teeth into hot street food, the various halls, rooms and tents across town were packed out for Master of Food courses, education activities for families, Taste Workshops, numerous conferences and a line-up of events at the Literary Café and Biodiversity House.
“Save a Cheese”, was the theme of the event, with visitors asked to bring along a cheese they would like to save and add it to the list of nominations for the Ark of Taste, Slow Food’s catalogue of endangered products. Visitors surprised us, bringing a total of 250 cheeses, filling the display cases in the Ark of Taste space with diversity, stories and color. “Every cheese is an expression of a profession, an economy, production from the pasture to the maturation. We have seen it and we have touched it with our own hands over the last few days,” said Roberto Burdese, president of Slow Food Italy.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Slow Food