Originated as an online tasting course, Parmigiano Reggiano Academy is now available for small cheese shops and specialty food stores across the United States, with the most recent session occurring at New York’s Eataly on Nov. 19. Consorzio del Formagio Parmigiano-Reggiano, the quality-control and marketing board for the cheese, sponsors the academy, in which participants learn the difference that aging makes in authentic Parmigiano Reggiano cheese at 16-, 24- and 36-month stages. Participating retailers have included Pasta Shop, Oakland, Calif.; The Cheese Shop of Des Moines, Des Moines, Iowa; Cheese to You, Lexington, Va., and Trio, Kitty Hawk, N.C., among others.
Using models developed for wine tasting, Italy’s Dr. Mario Zanoni led research in the area of sensory analysis of cheese to create the model for the academy. During in-store sessions, staff, customers or other participants are led through four sensory experiences. At the recent Eataly event, Nancy Radke, director of U.S. Information Office for the Consorzio, and co-instructor Josephine Nieuwenhuis taught participants to look at the cheese for color and textural changes; touch it to experience the feel of the cheese after different levels of aging; smell it and categorize the aroma into families of lactic, vegetal, floral, fruit, toasted, animal and spicy; and taste it to experience the sweet, bitter, sour, salty and umami flavors. Each participant received a wheel of aroma and flavor discriptors to help guide them through the process.parm reg wheel
Recent academy classes have tied in with Parmigiano Reggiano Night, a global dinner party event sponsored by the Consorzio. This year’s Parmigiano Reggiano Night, an expansion from a tradition launched in 2012 with 25,000 Italian participants, will be held on Saturday, Nov. 30. Specialty retailers can encourage customers to sign up to host a party and select recipes featuring Parmigiano Reggiano by visiting parmesan.com. With this year’s Parmigiano Reggiano Night falling just after Thanksgiving, the theme is SmartCooking, which encourages hosts to reduce waste and reuse leftovers. At presstime, more than 4,200 people have signed up to host a dinner on Nov. 30 in countries including the the U.S, Italy, France, Spain, Morocco, Tunisia, Columbia, Brazil, Uruguay, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines. View a map of planned events by country.
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