From small and particular to
the farthest corners of the Planet:
language permitting

The jargon used when speaking about the agricultural and food industry is a language known and recognized by the common citizen and consumer, by the TV and newspapers user; also by you yourself, our careful reader, who haven’t missed for sure what we are going to talk about. If we analyse the vocabulary of those who speak (and write) about food, its origin and peculiarities, we don’t we notice an obsessively recurrent, and for this reason reassuring for many people, use of a range of words that became with the passing of time nearly empty and meaningless? Why has this happened? Because some terms have been repeated endlessly for years and taken as a hostage every time that the speech languished, trying to give dignity or a thread to the lame thought of the gourmet in question or of the know-all expert of wine or of food specialities.

These words at the beginning have been welcomed as extraordinary innovations of the linguistic panaroma of the agricultural and food industry, sparks and new colours for a subject about which still had been spoken about. Among these words we identified as novelties for the topic in question the substantives “territory”, “typicalness”, “tradition”, with their relevant adjectives: they are called the three Ts of the designation of origin agricultural and food industry.

Today these and more others words (quality, origin, guarantee, salubrity…and many others) lost significance on their way, their expressiveness, their content. Too bad, because the content, dear reader, exists for sure!

“Typicalness”, which means the specificity that characterizes a food, a fruit of the soil, a product transformed by expert hands, is the essence of the product itself and make the product live thanks to its originality. “Tradition” is the anthropologic environment in which the product is born and the process of transmission through the generations of the best ways and traditional methods to make it.

These are all words that, since so overused, risk to loose their correct definition and content. The same thing occurs when we talk about the “Territory”. Of course, we understand that we are speaking about the place where the product origins and it is cultivated or obtained in some other different way (practically, the production area), but we are loosing the force of the full meaning of this word, because of its repetitiveness and the often convenient use or because this word is used as a stopgap.

But “territory” is an important word, for it is the place where everything begins and where everything contributes to give a certain fruit of the earth: from soil itself, the air, the vegetation, to the traditions, to the usually employed techniques, to mankind. In conclusion, the “territory” is the cradle of a product, the place of its birth and the place where it is raised. For the Provolone Valpadana this place, small and different from the rest of our Planet, clearly outlined and defined, includes the margins or all the area of the provinces of Cremona, Bergamo, Brescia, Lodi, Milano, Mantova, Piacenza, Padova, Rovigo, Verona, Vicenza, Trento.

In these areas we can hear the first cries of the newly born cheese, and as soon as it is possible, a large number of forms bear off towards unexpectedly far away shelves and sale benches. Of course many of them would reach the South of Italy, which welcome the Provolone Valpadana because its genealogic tree starts right from here. But then Provolone Valpadana would leave for even further destinations, reaching Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium in Europe, but also Canada, Australia and USA. Countries where the Italian who is on a trip or the descendant of the emigrant is still looking for tastes coming from the place he left, from his own territory.