Food is never too far from Italian’s minds and it’s the place where world’s biggest cheese festival is held bi-annually. Popularly known as Bra Cheese Festival (Cheese - Le Forme del Latte), its one big cheesey party where one can see tables lined with cheese after cheese. In fact it’s a plethora of cheese as far as the eye can see. The fest features thousands of artisan varieties.
Every two years, a small city of Bra hosts a four-day street fair for cheese lovers and cheese makers from around the world, where one can sample never imagined variety of cheese. The aim with which the festival was started and still continues to be is to prevent the disappearance of local food traditions and stimulate interest in the food we eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how food choices affect the rest of the world.
The cheese comes in all types, shapes, sizes and form (soft, hard, stretched, pressed or blue). Pecorino, Gorgonzola, fontina, mozzarella, provolone, bitto, robiola, taleggio and hundreds of different cheeses with obscure names from the Italian regions and from distant parts of the world can be seen and sampled.
Also, there is a huge tent (Great Hall of Cheese) that is set up in the main square where one can taste hundreds of cheeses on display and wash them down with sips of wine from an array of more than 1,500 bottles from around the world.
It’s a fun event that attracts thousand of people from all corners. Believe me, it’s one of the biggest appointments of the year for people who are passionate about eating well. The next Cheese fair in Bra will be in the fall of 2009. I’m sure cheese fans won’t even think of missing the fest.
Bra Cheese Festival Picture Gallery
Source: ABC News
