Gorgonzola is a soft table cheese produced from whole pasteurised cow’s milk, poured into container units at a temperature of about 30°C with the addition of fermented milk bacteria, rennet and penicillin spores. Once branded to show the origin, the cheese proceeds to the salting and seasoning stages; when the cheese is still only three or four weeks old, it is pierced with special metal needles that allow air to enter the paste, causing the typical green/blue streaks (the so-called erborination).

Gorgonzola is a cheese that apart from its typical streaked appearance, is furthermore characterised by its particular and lightly piquant flavour. It would seem that in ancient times this cheese was called “stracchino”, a word deriving from “stracco”, in other words tired, referring to the transhumance of the cow herds from the Alps to the Po Valleys.

The name “gorgonzola”, instead, derives from the town of the same name bordering on Milan, where this famous erborinated cheese would seem to have been produced for the first time in the year 879.

In the Nineties, the European Community officially acknowledged gorgonzola cheese, registering it in the listing of DOP products (Denomination of Protected Origin) on June 12, 1996, with EEC Registration No. 1107/96. From that moment on, stringent legislation establishes the production standards, the circumscribed area in which the milk collection and the seasoning take place; gorgonzola’s DOP territory in fact, encompasses the provinces of Bergamo, Biella, Brescia, Como, Cremona, Cuneo, Lecco, Lodi, Milan, Novara, Pavia, Varese, Verbania, Vercelli and the Casale Monferrato area in the province of Alessandria.

Furthermore, each head of gorgonzola is branded at the origin, indicating the producer; the Consortium for the Protection of the Gorgonzola Cheese, which was created in 1970, makes sure that the norms in force are complied with both in Italy and in foreign countries