Lonely Planet

ROAD TRIP ITALIAOctober 2017 Lonely Planet Traveller 75MILE 16Reggio EmiliaFurther southeast along the Po Valley, towards thetown of Reggio Emilia, a lazy sunrise is in no hurry toburn off the earth’s misty blanket. When the fog finallydeparts, it reveals a landscape so fecund that eventelephone wires are overgrown with vines. AtParmesan dairy farm Fattoria Marchesini, six-foothaystacks, built high like forbidding castle walls,attest to how easy it is to grow animal feed here.And that’s a good thing, since Parmesan can only beproduced in a land of plenty – it takes the milk of 100cows to create just six wheels of the cheese.Maria-Luisa Marchesini and her brother Andrea areoverseeing the morning’s production. Milk heating ina copper vat coats the room with a comforting scentlike rice pudding. Soon fragments of curd clumptogether to form a 100kg mega-wheel, which Andreacradles into a linen cloth and cuts in two. The twincheeses are settled into a brine bath for several days,then transferred to a maturation room, where theyare watched over by CCTV. Such is their value that,in Emilia-Romagna, banks take Parmesan wheels assecurity deposits. After a year, they’ll have hardened,gained the amber patina of age and be ready forexamination by inspectors, who tap the cheese withacoustic hammers, listening for structural impurities.‘Our ears, our eyes, our noses, our hands – we have touse all our senses to check the Parmesan is developingcorrectly,’ explains Maria-Luisa. ‘Growing up on thisfarm, these skills are in our DNA.’MILE 38ModenaAll along the Via Emilia there are families producingfood according to artisanal practices honed overgenerations. Antica Acetaia Villa Bianca, an estate justoutside of Modena, is one of many places along theroad where time seems to stand still. A wrought-irongate opens to a white-walled mansion dating back tothe 1600s. Classical opera pours out the windows intothe garden, where wooden pergolas are loaded withplump Trebbiano grapes. There is one concession tomodernity: a pair of robotic lawnmowers stalkbetween the vines, silently creeping up on proprietorEmilio Biancardi. ‘We bought two because we hopedthey’d reproduce,’ he jokes.Up in the mansion’s timber-beamed attic, dozensof wooden casks are arranged in descending order ofsize. Grape must is matured into traditional balsamicvinegar by decanting the evaporating, fermentingliquid into a smaller barrel every 12 months. After25 years, around 90 per cent of the original volumehas disappeared and what is left is sweet, tangy andsyrup thick. ‘These barrels were a dowry gift from mygreat-grandmother to my great-grandfather,’ saysThe Parmigiano Reggianocheeses of FattoriaMarchesini are made to a400-year-old process.OPPOSITE Maria-LuisaMarchesini and her brotherAndrea at the family dairy