This weekend we took an amazing field trip. Chef Polegri had set up a trip for us to go to Parma and Tuscany. I was really looking forward to this trip. The plan was to go to a parmesan cheese factory a prosciutto factory and spend a night in Parma. This for me was a trip I was looking forward to.
We started the day with a long bus ride starting at four in the morning. We slept on the bus on the way there. When we woke up we were almost to the first stop of the day, the parmesan cheese factory. This itself was a real treat. I will admit it was not the place I was looking forward to the most but it became one of the top two places we visited for me. The amount of care ad time that our guide spent in explaining the cheese itself made the trip worthwhile.
The day before we left, there was a cheese seminar with John at Zeppelin. The information that he provided along with what was provided to us by our guide was a treasure trove. The nuisances of the flavors and how it was explained to us was helpful for the day ahead.
While there we were shown the entire process of making the cheese, for start to finish. We were allowed to taste some of the cheese fresh from the vat. After we were shown the other steps to the cheese making process, we were taken to the tasting room. In the tasting room we were given three samples of cheese to taste, these were a 12 month aged, a 24 month and a 30 month. You could really tell the difference between the flavors in each. One of the things I liked was that each was very distinctly flavored and even the difference between the 24 and the 30 month was discernible.
Our next stop was to a prosciutto factory. This was a stop I had high hopes for. I must say that our guide offered a lot of valuable information; the stop was overall a letdown. While our tour guide was still amazing for this leg of the trip, the location we went to was not so much. The staff seemed to have the attitude that us being there was more of a nuisance.
Then we stopped at a balsamic vinegar production facility. This stop was amazing. I had never known the flavor profiles of balsamic could be so intense. I am so used to the Americanized version. The amount of work and love that goes into it is right up there with wine. How the flavor profiles can be adjusted and played with.
The final stop of our day was Parma itself. I had the opportunity to walk to and around the city before dinner. It was really an amazing place. It was explained to me that Parma itself is a wealthy town because it has three of the major exports of the county, prosciutto, cheese and vinegar. The town was one of a kind. And a place I would love to visit again. This was just day one of the trip and it was amazing. Day two was amazing as well but for now the story ends.
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