In Torino for the 2018 Salon del Gusto, I first explored the city. In the hard-to-find “Farmers” Area of Torino’s massive Porta Palazzo market, most of the cheese was smelly and looked like a rock. I saw and bought one thing that appealed to me. There was no sign and no talking in English. The cheese turned out to be spectacular.

I went back, but the seller wasn’t there.

I don’t know if you’ll find my cheese, but you will find treasures IF you can find this part of the Porta Palazzo. Even many locals don’t know about it, so I made a map.

I bought it in the days before the Salon del Gusto. So I took photos of it and took it around to the Piemontese cheesemakers there, asking what it was. They laughed and said it looked “Dutch”, meaning someone had faked me. But I love Dutch cheese and this wasn’t that.

Six months later, back in Torino I went again to the Porta Palazzo to find the farmer, in vain.

Later I was in Bologna at a market and I saw a cheese that looked right – and then tasted right.

Not Piemontese, but not too far away. Venetian Ubriacone.

2 years later, back in Turin for a long-term  cheese hunt, I ask for the Ubriacone at Eataly and learn that Ubriacone just means drunken. Any kind of cheese can be coated with wine, or even packed in the spent peel of crushed wine grapes as part of the process. In Piemonte a common Ubriacone is Testun al Barolo, from Cuneo, a southern territory within Piemonte. Testun is a white crumbly, pasty cheese with nothing in common to the golden, nutty, crystalline character of the Veneto.

I ask Lorenzo at the very fine Borgo  Affinatori in Asti what kind of drunk cheese might be in my photos. He says it could be one of several Northeast Italian cheeses: Piave Vecchio or Stravecchio, a golden Asiago called Allevo (I’ve only had white Asiago), or a Vezzena. He caves Piemontese Bra Duro to his own specific (and remarkably similar) taste and texture, but he doesn’t get it drunk…

Finally, in May 2021, I was able to return to the Porta Palazzo market on a day when the vendor was there, with a little piece of my treasure hiding behind the others. Just under a kilo. I bought it all, at €35/kilo and begged her to write the name…

Bra Duro