Emilia Romagna of Italy in seven luxurious tastes

Foodies speak of Emilia Romagna’s produce with religious awe. Weeks of cheese. Heavenly wine bowls. Truffles are a godsend.

A taste that has lasted for centuries, sometimes thousands of years: balsamic vinegar, prosciutto, parmigiana reggiano, lambrusco, pasta, tomatoes and truffles. A gourmet directory of 26 food museums, 24 DOC wines, and many festivals of prosciutto, truffles and more.

Throw in the stunning architecture of Bologna, Modena and Parma, with an operatic sound, and Emilia Romagna is a dream destination for a foodie’s road trip.

Balsamic vinegar

Reduce the vinegar. They simply call it balsamic around these parts as a soothing and restorative balm: albeit at a price.

Real balsamic, like fine wine, has a protected origin, DOC. If you put a bottle of balsamic vinegar in your supermarket trolley, to serve as a salad dressing, it is unlikely to be one of the best of the region.

The creators of balsamic say there is only one ingredient: grapes boiled for several hours. That is not entirely true, they are polite. If the bottles are stored for 12 or 25 years, time and care are key ingredients as well. Every day the barrels are checked and turned regularly.

Such vintages are not used as salad dressing. Balsamic drizzled over aged Parmigiana Reggiano as a starter. Pour over strawberries, ice cream or panna cotta for dessert. For many, a drizzle of 12-year-old balsamic over ripe Parmigiana Reggiano is “La sua morte”, as it happens in this life, the perfect pairing.

In Modena, home of Ferrari, style flows into the vinegar again: the iconic round bottles created by the car designer back in 1987.

One tradition that has been preserved for a long time is to put down a balsamic battery, a collection of barrels, to celebrate the birth of a child. As the child grows, so does the balsamic.

Prosciutto

In Emilia Romagna, the talk of the cafe community often boasts that their city has the best prosciutto.

Check out the Modena Cathedral leaning on its tower. The frescoes around one of the entrances, possibly dating back to the 12th century, depict the farmer’s annual calendar.

As the bare winter begins in January, the industrious farmer must carve a pig’s leg to produce cured prosciutto to see his family through the hungry winter months.

The mists of the Po river, the same mist that allegedly saved Modena from the hordes of Atila the Hun, contribute to the healing process. Food is history in Emilia Romagna: history is food.

Parmigiana Reggiani

In this region, when they say cheese when it’s time to take a picture, they say, “Parmigiana Reggiano”.

Remember you are “on the farm”. Never say “cheese factory.” Creating Parmigiana Reggiano, the skill of using hands, the skill of art. Cheesemakers are like muscular midwives delivering two 50-pound wheels of cheese known as twin girls.

Originally, the Benedictine monks aimed to create a cheese that would last a long time. After being soaked in brine, which takes nine months to penetrate the center, the large wheels of cheese are stored in cheese cathedrals. The tires are changed every week, it is good to sweat for two summers. In fact, there is the silence of the cathedral, as talking is not allowed among the cheeses in case it spreads diseases.

Skilled testers gently tap the cheese with a hammer, orchestral percussion cheese, to check for holes. In two years, the cheese will decrease from 50kg to 40kg. As it grows, the structure changes, giving more crystals.

Small cheeses go to retailers while others go to a cheese bank, usually a bank, where it is held as collateral for farmers’ loans. The more mature three- and four-year-old cheeses are used to stuff pastas such as tortellini.

Lambrusco

Forget the memories of the cheap, sweet, hot pop you drank at youth parties.

Real Lambrusco, grapes from six different appellations within Emilia Romagna, is a dry, very complex wine.

“The nose is orange and pomegranate. Sharp acidity. Impressive length. This is my fourth bite,” said Filipino Bartolotto as he guided us to our first Lambrusco. “Even for experts this is a wine that is difficult to spit out,” explains the master taster and wine journalist.

“Now we’re moving to another country,” he said, picking up a glass of red Lambrusco. “Prunes and shades of beetroot. An inky-driven nose.”

Raising a glass to Lambrusco, “Chin-chin,” he urges. Before renegadely recommending that some Lambrusco wines pair well with … pizza.

Powerful young winemakers are driving Lambrusco forward. As well as using SuFriGradi, the F1 Grand Prix’s name for the fastest high-performance car, the wine bottle is the exact fit of a Ferrari F1 piston.

Barilla pasta

Early in the morning, as you walk through Modena’s large balcony, look through restaurant windows to see women playing, waving and shaping the day’s pasta.

For Barilla, pasta is an art. They hired Fellini and Lynch to bring art-house production values ​​to their commercials.

At Academia Barilla, Parma, chef Marcello likes his pasta al dente, with a slight bite. He criticizes the Neapolitans for cooking their pasta so briefly that it’s crunchy while decrying the Milanese who cook it past al dente to make it soft.

In Parma, Barilla’s first store is open to visitors to learn the history of Italy’s most famous pasta. Within walking distance is the Academia Barilla and its library of 26,000 food titles and 5,000 menus: open to the public, by appointment, on Mondays.

However, Marcello thinks outside the box, reinventing pasta. Overcooking the fusilli for 25 minutes, cooling it in ice water, drying it in the oven at 50 centigrade and finally frying it for just three seconds creates popcorn as a snack.

Mutti Tomatoes

Across the Po River region, 400 tomato growers are eager to be awarded the Golden Tomato
A tree. The 7 million euro annual prize competition encourages suppliers to produce the best fruit for Mutti’s chopped tomatoes and tomatoes.

In 1899 the Mutti family decided to focus on tomatoes and now their latest project is creating a canteen called “A place to eat”. Soon the tomato-resin structure, designed by Carlo Ratti, will open in the evening as a restaurant directed by Famiglia Cerea: a famous name that guarantees serious quality.

The canteen’s entrance, with echoes of Andy Warhol’s iconic work, is a wall of Mutti cans.

Truffles

There is a mystique to truffle hunting. Luigi Dattioli, who now runs Appennino Foods, searched for a year before his first truffle.

Even healthy truffle hunters with a lifetime of experience can draw blanks as their Lagotta Romagnolo dogs sniff among the roots of poplar, oak, hazelnut and hornbeam trees.

Many truffle hunters prefer female Lagottas, as they are said to concentrate better than males, keeping a sweet mortadella or prosciutto in their pocket to distract them from the truffles they find.

In the world’s truffle category, white truffles are the most prized, fetching around €5,000 per kilo on the volatile market. However, very few hunters are able to make a living from truffles alone.

Cooking hotspot

A rich area with soil, Emilia Romagna, cutting diagonally across Northern Italy from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean lays an epicurean epic. It is home to Bologna which many say is the food capital of the world. However, it is Parma that UNESCO has designated the world’s gastronomic community.

The ancient Via Emilia hosts a line of towns and cities, each with its own gastronomic heritage, creating Italy’s Food Valley. One of the hottest restaurants in the world.

Disclosure: Our tour was sponsored by Emilia Romagna Tourism.

Michael Edwards

Michael Edwards is a travel writer from Oxfordshire, UK. Although Michael published his first published travel pieces nearly four decades ago, he still finds new luxury destinations to visit and write about.