Skip to main content
Support

Browse by category

All categories
Home

Cheese from Italy, Veneto

Piave PDO

Cow milk from the province of Belluno is part-skimmed and, if the dairy wishes, pasteurised, then soured with two home-made starters, a milk starter and a whey starter of native strains, and set with calf rennet at 34–36 °C. The rice-size curd is semi-cooked at 44–47 °C, moulded in bands that print the name on the side, pressed and brined. It ripens at 10–14 °C and is sold from Fresco (20–60 days) to Vecchio Riserva (over 18 months).

Fully documentedCheese20 daysPDO (EU), Reg. (EU) No 443/2010; amended by Reg. (EU) 2020/1198Family: Cooked hard alpine cheese family (Comté, Gruyère and Emmentaler as templates)

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceThe amounts are the ONAF sheet's starter doses per hectolitre of milk; the specification itself fixes the starters' acidity. Wheels weigh about 5.5–6.8 kg.
Cow milk from the province of Belluno, at least 80% from Italian Brown, Italian Red Pied, Italian Friesian and Grey Alpine cows and their crosses; collected over at most 3 days[piave-2020][onaf-sheet]
Natural milk starter (lattoinnesto) made from thermised local milk, acidity 10 °SH/50 ± 30.1–0.5 l per hl of milk[piave-2020][onaf-sheet]
Natural whey starter (sieroinnesto) made from the dairy's whey, acidity 27 °SH/50 ± 30.3–0.7 l per hl of milk[piave-2020][onaf-sheet]
Calf rennet, 50% chymosin[onaf-sheet]
Lysozyme (E1105), optional, at the legal dose[onaf-sheet]
Salt, as brine[onaf-sheet]
Starternatural milk starter and whey starter of native strains, both made in the dairy

Total time across the recorded steps: 20 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: Some of the cream is spun off the milk

Step 1 of 6
Part-skim and heat-treat the milk
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

Pasteurisation is allowed but not required, so small mountain dairies may use raw milk. Preservatives in the collected raw milk are banned.

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

Cow milk from the province of Belluno is part-skimmed and, if the dairy wishes, pasteurised, then soured with two home-made starters, a milk starter and a whey starter of native strains, and set with calf rennet at 34–36 °C. The rice-size curd is semi-cooked at 44–47 °C, moulded in bands that print the name on the side, pressed and brined. It ripens at 10–14 °C and is sold from Fresco (20–60 days) to Vecchio Riserva (over 18 months). Made in 6 steps over 20 days. The longest step, ripen, takes at least 20 days (European Commission 2020) and runs at 10–14 °C (ONAF (national organisation of cheese tasters)).

Key numbers
Main stepat least 20 daysSet[piave-2020]Ripen
Temperature10–14 °CReported[onaf-sheet]Ripen

What makes this one different

Made only from Belluno milk with two starters grown in each dairy, a milk starter and a whey starter of native strains. Five age classes run from 20 days to over 18 months.

Types
Fresco 20–60 days, Mezzano 60–180 days, Vecchio over 6 months, Selezione Oro over 12 months, Riserva over 18 months
Size
Fresco about 32 cm across and 6.8 kg; Riserva about 27.5 cm across and 5.5 kg
Feed
At least 70% of forage and 50% of the ration's dry matter from the mountain production area

Related ferments

Safety

The milk may be raw or pasteurised, and Fresco can be sold from 20 days. Where the milk is raw, ANSES advises pregnant women, young children, people over 65 and people with weak immunity not to eat raw-milk cheeses other than pressed cooked ones such as Gruyère, because of Listeria, Salmonella and Shiga-toxin E. coli. Its page does not say whether Piave counts. The PDO text calls the paste cooked and ONAF semi-cooked, with the curd at 44–47 °C. Rind treatments against surface moulds are allowed.

History and sources

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

The Piave consortium traces the dairy tradition of Belluno to the first cooperative dairy of the new Kingdom of Italy, founded on 8 January 1872 at Canale d'Agordo by the parish priest don Antonio Della Lucia, where farmers worked their milk in turn (latteria turnaria). Many of these small dairies closed after the Second World War, while others merged with neighbouring villages into larger cooperatives. The ONAF sheet notes that Belluno milk averages 3.93% fat and 3.35% protein, more than milk from the other Veneto provinces (3.69% and 3.27%).

Microbes
No study we found names its microbes.
  1. [piave-2020] European Commission 2020, publication of an amendment application and single document "Piave" PDO, OJ C 115, 7.4.2020, approved by Reg. (EU) 2020/1198 (copy hosted by ONAF)spec
  2. [onaf-sheet] ONAF (national organisation of cheese tasters), technical sheet 'Piave'web
  3. [piave-consorzio] Consorzio per la tutela del formaggio Piave DOP, La storia del formaggio Piaveweb
  4. [anses2022] ANSES 2022, Fromages au lait cru, quels risques pour la santé et comment mieux les prévenir (8 April 2022)gov