Pozzali Lodigrana "Bella Lodi Riserva Bianca" (lbs)

Bella Lodi comes from Lodi, in the Lombard lowlands south of Milan, where grana cheesemaking reaches back centuries. Lodi’s old “granone” is considered the original grana and the ancestor of every grana cheese that followed, and Bella Lodi carries that lineage forward. The dairy behind it, Pozzali Lodigrana, began in 1947, when three University of Milan students in their final year chose cheesemaking as a career. They built their first dairy on their father’s farm and started turning milk from their own and neighboring farms into cheese. Today it remains a single historic dairy set within the protected Adda Sud park, and its milk travels from barn to vat in under an hour. The Riserva Bianca is the newest member of the Bella Lodi family. It blends cow’s milk with rich buffalo milk, both from selected herds in the provinces of Lodi and Crema that are raised on local forage and feed of purely vegetable origin. The buffalo milk gives the cheese a rounder, fuller character, and the result is a mouth-filling, lingering cheese carrying the grassy perfume of the pastures. A carefully selected set of cultures converts the milk’s lactose into lactic acid during fermentation and aging, which leaves the finished wheel naturally lactose-free. Serve it with a crisp white wine, fig jam and a slice of whole-grain bread.