Gustav and I were lucky enough to make it to this year’s “Formaggio in Villa” that took place over the 1st of May weekend and hosted the pre-elimination contest to the Italian cheese awards.
The concept of the event is an attractor to cheese-lovers as well as salumi-admirers and foodies of almost all kinds. – Find a beautiftul villa and pack it up with first-class producers from Italy.
As in the edition of 2017, the organizers around Guru del gusto picked the beautiful 18th century villa , Villa Farsetti in Santa Maria di Sala about a 30minute drive east of Padua.
With Versaille as its role-model the villa is set in a beautiful garden and it´s ancient columns are said to be from the roman temple of Concordia. (Obviously Filippo Farsetti had good connections to the then pope in service, who generously helped organizing those gems from the capital)
Besides having the opportunity to “taste and shop until you drop”, the public was also invited to take part in the pre-selection of Italy’s best cheeses.
100 cheeses, in 10 categories that passed the preliminary selection phase by the editors of Guru del Gusto under the guidance of Alberto Marcomini, also known as “il signore del formaggio” were up for tasting.
At the end of the event a selected jury then decided – allegedly also taking into account the public vote – on the top 3 of each category, which now will compete in the Italian Cheese Award final in October 2018.
Luckily the organizers were kind enough to split the process up into two days, otherwise Gustav and I probably wouldn´t have made it back to Vienna.
I can tell you – to taste 50 cheeses in one stint is no cakewalk!
I am sure the thought of tasting 100 cheeses gives some of you the creeps – but if you have the chance you should definitely head down to Formaggio in Villa next year !
Besides cheese you can find a relaxed atmosphere with tons of cured meat, pasta, wine, artisinal beer, live musik and DJs – all in the setting of an architectural beauty.
For those of you who are thinking cheese – the entire results can be found here.
My vote, by the way, only went accordingly in 4 categories –Gustav of course claims he got them all…
