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Cheese from Italy, Lombardia

Agrì di ValtortaAgrì della Valtorta

Agrì is a small fresh cheese from the upper Val Brembana, near Bergamo. Freshly milked raw cow or goat milk gets 1 % acid whey from an earlier batch and a little rennet, and sets slowly over 20–24 hours at 12–15 °C. The drained curd is kneaded with salt, rolled into thin logs and cut into small cylinders that ripen one to several weeks.

Fully documentedCheese7.8 days – 8 daysPATFamily: Fresh lactic (acid-set) cheese family

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceAmounts as given in the regional sheet; the salt is per kilogram of drained curd.
Whole raw cow or goat milkUsed straight after milking[pat-sheet][onaf-sheet]
Acid whey from a previous make1 % of the milk[pat-sheet][onaf-sheet]
Calf rennetA little[pat-sheet][onaf-sheet]
Salt25 g per kg of curd[pat-sheet][onaf-sheet]
Starterbackslop (1 % acid whey from a previous make)

Total time across the recorded steps: 7.8 days – 8 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play
shapes, not to countLactococcus lactisL. mesenteroides

What changes: Acid whey from the last batch and a little rennet go into fresh raw milk

Step 1 of 5
Add acid whey and a little rennet to fresh milk
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactococcus lactis
L. mesenteroides

Output: seeded milk.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Agrì is a small fresh cheese from the upper Val Brembana, near Bergamo. Freshly milked raw cow or goat milk gets 1 % acid whey from an earlier batch and a little rennet, and sets slowly over 20–24 hours at 12–15 °C. The drained curd is kneaded with salt, rolled into thin logs and cut into small cylinders that ripen one to several weeks. Made in 5 steps over 7.8 days – 8 days. The longest step, ripen, takes at least 7 days (Regione Lombardia). Salt is 2.5 % (Regione Lombardia). Lactococcus lactis and Leuconostoc mesenteroides, the main bacteria in Robiola di Roccaverano, a related Piedmont soft goat cheese made with a natural milk culture does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main stepat least 7 daysReported[pat-sheet][onaf-sheet]Ripen
Temperature12–15 °CReported[pat-sheet][onaf-sheet]Let the milk set slowly under a cloth
Salt2.5 %Reported[pat-sheet][onaf-sheet]Knead with salt and shape

What makes this one different

Agrì is set mostly by acid at a cool 12–15 °C over a whole day, seeded with acid whey from the last batch. Its curd is not cut; in the PAT method it is drained in linen bundles, kneaded with salt and rolled by hand into small cylinders.

Rind
None (white, moist); thin wrinkled yellow or grey skin forms with maturation
Size
Ø 3–4 cm, h 4–6 cm; about 100 g in the PAT sheet, 50 g (Ø 3 cm) for the cow-only Slow Food presidium cheese

Related ferments

Variants

  • Pasta di AgrìThe half-made curd paste once sold to cheesemakers in the next valley, who finished it.
  • Slow Food presidiumCow milk only.

Safety

The milk is used raw and the cheese is eaten after only one to several weeks. ANSES advises pregnant women, young children, people over 65 and people with weak immunity not to eat raw-milk cheeses other than hard cooked ones such as gruyère or comté, because of Listeria, Salmonella and enterohaemorrhagic E. coli.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Agrì was once made on many farms of the upper Val Brembana. Around Valtorta it was usual to make a half-finished product called pasta di Agrì. Each week women carried it on foot, in baskets on their backs, over the pastures of Ceresola and the Piani di Bobbio to cheesemakers in Barzio and Introbio in the Valsassina, who finished it. Until the postwar period around 40 farmers made Agrì. As the Bergamo area industrialized, production fell and now centres on Valtorta and Ornica, where a Slow Food presidium protects it (since 2011, per the ONAF sheet). The name comes from "agra", the acid whey added to the milk as inoculum.

  1. [pat-sheet] Regione Lombardia, traditional food product (PAT) sheet "Agrì di Valtorta" (copy hosted by ONAF)gov
  2. [onaf-sheet] ONAF (Organizzazione Nazionale Assaggiatori Formaggi), technical sheet "Agrì di Valtorta" (gives both the PAT and the Slow Food presidium methods)web
  3. [slowfood] Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity, Presidium "Valtorta Agrì"web
  4. [biolcati2022] Biolcati F., Ferrocino I., Bottero M.T., Dalmasso A. 2022, The Bacterial and Fungal Microbiota of "Robiola di Roccaverano" Protected Designation of Origin Raw Milk Cheese, Frontiers in Microbiology 12:776862paper
  5. [anses2022] ANSES 2022, Fromages au lait cru, quels risques pour la santé et comment mieux les prévenir (8 April 2022)gov