I Finally Walked Into the Room I'd Been Dreaming About

The appropriately named WOW Room at Borgo del Gazzano, near Parma, Italy.

The smell hit me before I could fully take in what I was looking at.

Salty, nutty, deeply savory. The kind of smell that makes you wish there were some way to bottle the air and bring it home.

And then I looked up.

There they were.

Towering shelves of Parmigiano Reggiano, wheel after wheel stacked above my head and stretching farther into the room than I could see. I'd imagined standing somewhere like this for years. I'd seen the photographs, watched the videos, and wondered what it would actually feel like to be surrounded by that much cheese.

Now, at an organic dairy outside Parma, I was finally standing in what they appropriately call the WOW Room.

But here's what I hadn't expected: by the time I reached the room I'd been dreaming about, I'd already tasted cheese warm from a copper vat, met a calf born just hours earlier, and made friends with a cat who was apparently very serious about making biscuits.

And somehow, all of that made the room even better.

It Started With a Cat

My mom and I had arrived a little early for our Five Senses Tour at Borgo del Gazzano, an organic Parmigiano Reggiano producer outside the center of Parma. Part of the reason I'd booked the experience was my admittedly enthusiastic relationship with cheese. The other part was professional curiosity. As a travel advisor, I'm constantly looking for those less obvious experiences that I can confidently recommend to clients, the kinds of things that make a trip feel like more than a collection of famous landmarks.

But before any of that could happen, I had a very important appointment with a farm cat.

This little guy greeted us outside, and before long I was sitting in the sunshine holding him while he kneaded away with his paws, sharing what I can only assume was a top-secret biscuit recipe. I was perfectly content to spend the rest of the morning there, but apparently we had come to see some cheese.

Our first introduction to the actual cheesemaking process didn't happen in the production room. It happened with the cows. And on this particular morning, there was a calf that had been born only hours earlier.

I'd come to see the finished product, those enormous wheels I'd admired in photographs for years. But standing there with the animals, including one that had only just entered the world, made me think about how far removed we usually are from the origins of our food. Before the aging rooms, before the distinctive salty flavor, before those little crunchy crystals I love so much, there is simply milk.

And from there, things got interesting.

The Cheese Didn't Taste Anything Like I Expected

Inside the production room, enormous copper vats dominated the space. The cheesemakers were already at work, and we got to watch something that photographs of finished Parmigiano Reggiano had never really prepared me for: the fresh cheese being gathered, shaped, and lifted from the vats.

It was still warm.

And then we got to taste some.

Now, I've eaten more than my fair share of Parmigiano Reggiano, but this tasted absolutely nothing like the cheese I knew. It was soft, fresh, slightly sweet, and wonderfully milky. Which, when you think about it, makes perfect sense. We were tasting it before time had done any of the work that makes Parmigiano Reggiano what it eventually becomes.

I found that contrast fascinating. The same starting point that would eventually produce something intensely savory and crumbly was, at that moment, delicate and sweet.

As we continued through the dairy, we saw how the cheese was shaped into wheels, given its identifying markings, and eventually soaked in saltwater brine. Each finished wheel weighs around 40 kilograms, or roughly 88 pounds. We were told that this organic producer is limited to 2,000 wheels annually. At that scale, you're talking about the potential for more than 175,000 pounds of cheese in a year.

That's an extraordinary amount of cheese, especially when you've just watched how much care goes into making a single wheel.

But the most extraordinary part was still ahead.

The WOW Room Really Does Live Up to Its Name

I'd spent years wanting to walk between those towers of cheese, and standing there was every bit as wonderful as I'd imagined.

There was the smell, of course. That concentrated, salty, umami-rich aroma filling the entire space. But there was also the sheer visual impact of it all. Wooden shelves rose high above us, holding row after row of enormous wheels. It was almost architectural, like walking through a library where every book had been replaced with 88 pounds of cheese.

I don't know how long I could have happily wandered around that room, but it would have been longer than our tour allowed.

What surprised me, though, was how differently I was looking at those shelves now. Earlier that morning, I would have seen a spectacular room full of cheese. After meeting the cows, tasting the warm curds, and watching the wheels take shape, I was beginning to understand the work and time represented by everything around me.

And even after all that effort, not every wheel gets to keep the name Parmigiano Reggiano.

That was another thing I hadn't fully appreciated before this tour.

The cheese undergoes strict inspections, and wheels that don't meet the requirements for the protected designation cannot simply be sold under the same name. The identifying markings around the exterior are physically removed.

Think about that for a moment. The name is so carefully protected that if a wheel doesn't qualify, the evidence identifying it as Parmigiano Reggiano is literally stripped from its rind.

If that doesn't tell you how seriously Italians take their cheese, I'm not sure what will.

At Borgo del Gazzano, one of these cheeses has been given a rather brilliant name: Limbo.

Yes, as in Dante's Divine Comedy.

The producer explains that the cheese never received the official branding that would allow it to be called Parmigiano Reggiano. So, naturally, it's stuck in Limbo.

Apparently, even cheese can have an existential crisis in Italy.

But just because a cheese doesn't qualify for the famous name doesn't mean it isn't worth eating.

Which brings me to the part of the tour I had been looking forward to almost as much as the WOW Room.

Thirty Months, Sixty Months, and a Little Balsamic Vinegar

The experience is called the Five Senses Tour for a reason. Throughout the morning, we'd been encouraged to see, touch, smell, and listen. Now it was time for the final sense.

Taste.

We gathered standing around a table covered with generous chunks of cheese. There was Limbo, Parmigiano Reggiano aged for 30 months, and another aged for an impressive 60 months.

We started by tasting each on its own, which made the differences particularly interesting after experiencing the fresh cheese earlier that morning. Limbo was delicious in its own right, a reminder that a cheese can fall short of a particular certification standard without falling short of being enjoyable.

Then came the aged Parmigiano Reggiano.

The 60-month cheese had something I absolutely love: those little crystalline bits that develop as cheese matures. That unexpected crunch against the crumbly texture is one of my favorite things about aged cheese, and this one certainly delivered.

But if I had to choose a favorite based purely on flavor, the 30-month won.

For me, it hit that sweet spot of rich, savory Parmigiano Reggiano flavor without going quite as far into the intensity of the older cheese. The 60-month fascinated me, but the 30-month was the one I kept wanting another piece of.

And we weren't finished. Next, we tried the cheeses with balsamic vinegar, adding another layer of flavor to the tasting. Finally, we enjoyed them alongside a local sparkling white wine.

There I was, standing in an Italian dairy, eating beautiful cheese with balsamic vinegar and wine, after spending the morning watching how it was made.

There are worse ways to spend a Saturday.

What made the tasting special wasn't simply that the cheese was delicious. It was that we'd followed its story from the very beginning. I'd tasted it warm and milky, watched the wheels being made, stood in a room filled with the unmistakable aroma of aging cheese, and learned how carefully the finished product is judged.

Now I could taste what time had done to it.

Thirty months. Sixty months. The same humble beginning, with remarkably different results.

More Than Just a Cheese Tour

I've eaten Parmigiano Reggiano more times than I could possibly count, and considering how much of it left Borgo del Gazzano with my mom and me that afternoon, I'll be eating quite a bit more of it at home.

I'll grate it over pasta, break off pieces while cooking, and continue pretending that repeatedly sampling cheese straight from the wedge is simply a necessary part of quality control.

But I don't think I'll ever look at it quite the same way again.

This is exactly why I love seeking out experiences like this when I travel, both for myself and for the people who trust me to help plan their trips. You can visit Italy and eat wonderful food every day. You absolutely should. But there's something different about going to the places where that food begins, meeting the people and animals behind it, and understanding the work that turns a familiar ingredient into something extraordinary.

I came to Borgo del Gazzano because I wanted to see those towers of Parmigiano Reggiano.

I left with a much better story.

And, admittedly, quite a lot of cheese.