How it was born: it’s native of Valle Brembana (Cusio, Averara, Valtorta and Val Taleggio), born as a variant of long seasoned cheeses like gorgonzola. Some of its peculiarities depend on the particular climate of the mountain dairy farms which are the ideal place for the production of a very valuable cheese like this. Strachitunt (the dialectical form or “round stracchino”) belongs to that large cheese family that only some cheese mongers’ tenacity enables us to taste still today.

How it’s like: it’s a raw paste blue-cheese belonging to the “stracchino family”. It’s made with full-cream cow’s milk. It’s cylindrical (the name “tunt” comes from its shape) with plain faces with a diameter of about 25cm and a straight “scalzo” (the side surface) 15-18cm long. Every cheese weighs about 6kg. The rind is wrinkled, yellowish verging on grayish if the cheese is well-matured. The paste is thick but with creamy striations, melting under the rind, with wide-spread green-blue veining. The punching is small, irregular and not thick. The taste and the fragrance are characteristic.

How it’s made: it’s made joining two pastes, one of the evening and one of the morning. The evening curd must be gathered in cloth bundles put to drain all night long on a characteristic wooden (sometimes steel) shelf called “spersoio”, in a room with a very high level of moisture and a temperature of about 18°C. This operation shall be repeated with the morning milk even if curds are put to drain just for 20 or 30 minutes. Now slices, a few cm thick, are cut from each curd, and then alternatively placed in a mould paying attention that the upper and the lower strata are made up of the morning curd, because it’s softer and binds more easily to the cheese. In the end it’s the turn of the process of stewing and later of salting (dry salting). So the cheese is ready for the seasoning, which must take place in rooms with a temperature of about 10°C, which then goes down to 2-4°C. After about 30 days the cheese must be punched on its sides and on the “scalzo”. The two curds must have a different consistence in order not to let them amalgamate and so let some small spaces, which, after the punching, will fill in with water. It’s in these spaces that the moulds develop their characteristic efflorescence. The optimum period of maturation is of about 3 months, after which the maturation isn’t recommended.

Production area: the territory of Val Brembana.