{"id":4335,"date":"2025-04-10T03:04:12","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T03:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/why-tap-a-wheel-of-cheese\/"},"modified":"2025-04-10T03:04:12","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T03:04:12","slug":"why-tap-a-wheel-of-cheese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/why-tap-a-wheel-of-cheese\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Tap a Wheel of Cheese?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Renato Giudici demonstrates his skill photo credit Kristine Jannuzzi<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Behind the approximately 4 million wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano produced annually, there is a tiny team of 24 battitori responsible for ensuring the quality of each one. Armed with a small metal hammer, these specialized \u201cdrummers\u201d tap every wheel after the minimum aging period of 12 months, and within 6-7 seconds they can detect if there are any defects, based purely on the sounds they hear.<\/p>\n

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Shadowing the Battitori<\/h2>\n
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Author Kristine Jannuzzi with Alessandro Stocchi and Renato Giudici<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I had the privilege of spending the morning with two of these maestros on the job in Emilia-Romagna: Alessandro Stocchi, a dynamic 37-year-old native of Reggio Emilia who began training to become a battitore in 2014, and his mentor, Renato Giudici, who at 81 years old, embodies a lifetime of passion for Parmigiano Reggiano.\u00a0Renato is a former cheesemaker who made Parmigiano Reggiano for many years, and rather than retire, he chose to become a guardian of the King of Cheeses as a battitore.<\/em><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no course to learn the niche skills and nuances of this trade; Alessandro accompanied and apprenticed with Renato and other experts for about 3 years, learning through firsthand experience how to assess each wheel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe particularity of this profession to me is that it\u2019s like it was 200 years ago, and it\u2019s a skill that\u2019s handed down from generation to generation. You go around with the most expert, most experienced battitori, and you watch and listen to them, and slowly they start to give you the hammer. You try with them next to you, piano piano, and gradually, you begin to do more on your own,\u201d explained Stocchi. \u201cIt\u2019s a big responsibility, you have to be really capable of doing it, you can\u2019t damage the cheese.\u201d<\/p>\n

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How Parmigiano Reggiano is Evaluated<\/h2>\n
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Alessandro Stocchi explains the grading system photo credit Kristine Jannuzzi<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Renato showed me the ideal setup, with a wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano flat on a stool underneath the one that is being evaluated, so there is no extraneous noise. If the sound is homogeneous throughout the tapping, there are no defects.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hit all of the surfaces of the cheese, and from the sound of the hammer against the surface we can imagine in our mind an Xray of the wheel and how it is internally. For a perfect wheel with no defects, the paste is completely compact, no empty space. If there are structural defects, such as little fissures or cavities, we can hear that the sound of the hammer is different,\u201d explained Stocchi.<\/p>\n

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Parmigiano Reggiano Categories<\/h2>\n
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A cheese wheel with double parallel lines photo credit Kristine Jannuzzi<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n