Maccagno Biellese - Wheel Apx 2.2kg

Maccagno Biellese

Caseificio Rosso | Biella, Piedmont

The signature cheese of the Biellese alps, and of historic importance to Caseificio Rosso. Maccagno takes its name from the alpine pasture of the same name, high above the Valle Cervo, where shepherds have been making this style of soft, young mountain cheese for centuries. It's the everyday cheese of the Biellese highlands — unpretentious, deeply satisfying, and built around the sweetness of well-kept milk. Come winter, it is widely served in rifugi and mountain restaurants of the Italian Alps, melted generously over hot polenta.

Aged: 30 to 60 days on white fir boards, in underground cellars.

Rind: Medium consistency, brown in colour, sometimes carrying characteristic yellow surface moulds. One side is imprinted with the "Maccagno Biellese" mark and the "Toma Rosso" house trademark.

Paste: Tender and yielding, white with faint straw-coloured shadows, shot through with fine, regularly distributed holes. Soft to the knife, almost spreadable at room temperature.

Aroma: Fresh butter and warm cream, with a quiet grassy lift and a clean lactic freshness.

Flavour: Sweet, gentle, and generous. Cultured butter at the core, milky and lightly sweet, with a soft vegetal note that keeps it from reading one-dimensional. No sharpness, no bitterness — just long, clean, buttery pleasure. A cheese that wins over everyone at the table.

Texture: Soft and pillowy, with a cool, elastic give when sliced cold. Warms quickly to a silken, melting consistency that clings to bread and coats the palate.

In the kitchen: A true all-rounder — brilliant on the board with grissini, chestnut honey, or fresh pear, and equally at home melted into polenta concia, layered through a savoury tart, or stirred through risotto in the last minutes of cooking. Toasts beautifully on country bread. Its sweetness makes it a natural foil for cured meats, bitter leaves, and mountain honeys.

About the Producer

Caseificio Rosso is a family-run dairy at the heart of the Biellese alpine arc in north-western Piedmont. Founded in 1894 by Rosa Pidello Rosso, the business is now run by Enrico and Riccardo Rosso, the fourth generation to carry on the family's work.

The dairy sits where the Valle d'Oropa meets the Valle del Cervo, in valleys that open out from the plain like a vast amphitheatre, bounded to the west by the long moraine ridge of La Serra and to the north and east by the peaks of the main alpine chain. Maturation still takes place in the Upper Elvo Valley, where the Rossos come from.

Milk is the foundation of everything. It is collected daily from 30 small Biellese farms, all of which raise a single native breed, the Pezzata Rossa d'Oropa. Robust and muscular, suited to the demands of mountain farming, but at risk of extinction. Caseificio Rosso, together with local farmers, has worked carefully over the years to preserve and improve the breed.

Each summer, the cows are brought to the high alpine pastures for four to five months. This practice — la monticazione — is one of the oldest rhythms of Alpine life, and it's what gives the milk its richness and floral character.

Production follows the same traditional logic: curd worked by hand, turned repeatedly during resting, then brined and moved to cool, humid cellars between 8 and 12°C. The cheeses rest on white fir shelves, hand-turned weekly as they mature.

The Rossos also run FORMA, a company museum and cultural space at the Pollone site — a workshop for projects tied to alpine culture, mountain life, and its economies. It's a clear signal of how the family thinks about their role: not simply as producers, but as custodians of a mountain craft that still shapes the valleys they work in.