Parmigiano Reggiano San Simone
Our New 24, 48 and 100 Month Vertical at All’Amarone!
At All’Amarone, we have a new Parmigiano Reggiano vertical on the menu: three ageing stages, one producer, and one clear idea of time.
We chose Caseificio San Simone, just outside Reggio Emilia, to tell the story of Parmigiano Reggiano through three very different moments in its life: 24, 48 and 100 months.
Same producer, same milk, same rules. Then time does the rest.
Caseificio San Simone
The story began in 1902 in Soliera, near Modena, where the grandfather of today’s cheesemaker first picked up the trade. In the 1950s the family moved to Bagno, in the province of Reggio Emilia, and stayed there for over forty years. In 1991 the third generation of the Lugli family brought the dairy to its current home along the Via Emilia,in Reggio Emilia, where it still operates today.
Three generations. One family. The same cheese.
The scale is deliberately small: between 18 and 20 wheels a day, using milk from Friesian cows at two associated farms, both within 10 kilometres of the dairy. Around 9,900 litres of milk every day, from two milkings, arriving raw and with no additives.
That’s the starting point for everything.
The evening milk arrives at the dairy and goes into steel double-bottomed vats, cooled to 18°C, so the fat rises to the surface naturally. San Simone skims that cream off separately for butter.
The next morning, the skimmed evening milk is transferred into the copper-lined cauldrons, where it meets the fresh morning milking.
Two ingredients bring the milk to curd: natural whey starter, grown from the serum of the previous day’s production and rich in lactic bacteria, and calf rennet. At 32 to 33°C, the milk coagulates in nine to ten minutes.
The cheesemaker then breaks the curd by hand with the spino, a traditional tool unchanged for generations. The fragments are cooked up to 54 to 55°C, then left to rest for around 45 minutes at the bottom of the bell-shaped copper cauldron, where they settle into a single compact mass weighing roughly 100 kilograms.
That mass is lifted out with a wooden paddle, wrapped in linen, and divided in two. Each half goes into a mould, where a punched band is inserted along the edge: this is what stamps the wheel with the dairy’s registration number, the year and month of production, and a placeholder for the Consortium’s quality mark. After a couple of days, every wheel goes into brine for 18 to 20 days.
Then comes the warehouse. The wheels are kept at controlled temperature and humidity, turned and cleaned at regular intervals, and left to lose moisture slowly while the rind forms and fermentation continues. After a minimum of twelve months, a Consortium inspector checks each wheel with the traditional small hammer. Only the wheels that pass earn the fire brand and the right to be called Parmigiano Reggiano DOP.
San Simone’s warehouse now holds up to 20,000 wheels at a time, expanded in stages in 2006 and 2018. Enough space to be patient. Which is exactly the point.
The Vertical: 24, 48 and 100 Months
Parmigiano Reggiano 24 Months
Still young by Parmigiano standards, but already a full cheese. We taste milk, butter, and a clean lactic sweetness up front, the texture still holding plenty of moisture. This is Parmigiano at its most approachable, and the best starting point for understanding San Simone’s milk.
Parmigiano Reggiano 48 Months
The structure changes here. The paste firms up, the crystals start to show, and we find hay, dried fruit, and a savoury depth that wasn’t there at 24 months. The cheese turns more complex, ready to stand beside a wine with more structure behind it.
Parmigiano Reggiano 100 Months
The rarest cheese in the vertical. Eight years in the warehouse leaves a wheel almost crumbly, dense with tyrosine crystals. We taste intense savouriness and a finish that just keeps going. Not every dairy can hold wheels this long without losing them. San Simone can, and that’s worth tasting on its own.
Pulled side by side, the three tell one continuous story: moisture leaving, structure tightening, flavour concentrating. No tricks, no shortcuts, just patience.
Come taste the vertical at the bar. Same producer, same family, three very different moments in a wheel’s life.
You can book by using the request form below
