Why Tap a Wheel of Cheese?
Renato Giudici demonstrates his skill photo credit Kristine Jannuzzi
Behind the approximately 4 million wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano produced annually, there is a tiny team of 24 battitori responsible for ensuring the quality of each one. Armed with a small metal hammer, these specialized “drummers” tap every wheel after the minimum aging period of 12 months, and within 6-7 seconds they can detect if there are any defects, based purely on the sounds they hear.
Shadowing the Battitori
Author Kristine Jannuzzi with Alessandro Stocchi and Renato Giudici
I had the privilege of spending the morning with two of these maestros on the job in Emilia-Romagna: Alessandro Stocchi, a dynamic 37-year-old native of Reggio Emilia who began training to become a battitore in 2014, and his mentor, Renato Giudici, who at 81 years old, embodies a lifetime of passion for Parmigiano Reggiano. Renato is a former cheesemaker who made Parmigiano Reggiano for many years, and rather than retire, he chose to become a guardian of the King of Cheeses as a battitore.
There’s no course to learn the niche skills and nuances of this trade; Alessandro accompanied and apprenticed with Renato and other experts for about 3 years, learning through firsthand experience how to assess each wheel.
“The particularity of this profession to me is that it’s like it was 200 years ago, and it’s a skill that’s handed down from generation to generation. You go around with the most expert, most experienced battitori, and you watch and listen to them, and slowly they start to give you the hammer. You try with them next to you, piano piano, and gradually, you begin to do more on your own,” explained Stocchi. “It’s a big responsibility, you have to be really capable of doing it, you can’t damage the cheese.”
How Parmigiano Reggiano is Evaluated
Alessandro Stocchi explains the grading system photo credit Kristine Jannuzzi
Renato showed me the ideal setup, with a wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano flat on a stool underneath the one that is being evaluated, so there is no extraneous noise. If the sound is homogeneous throughout the tapping, there are no defects.
“We hit all of the surfaces of the cheese, and from the sound of the hammer against the surface we can imagine in our mind an Xray of the wheel and how it is internally. For a perfect wheel with no defects, the paste is completely compact, no empty space. If there are structural defects, such as little fissures or cavities, we can hear that the sound of the hammer is different,” explained Stocchi.
Parmigiano Reggiano Categories
A cheese wheel with double parallel lines photo credit Kristine Jannuzzi
Top quality, suitable for longer aging
Lower quality, best consumed young
Significant defects, not labeled Parmigiano Reggiano
There are three different categories to which the wheels are assigned. The first is perfect, or with negligible defects, and these wheels receive the fire-branded Parmigiano Reggiano mark. The second category with minor defects is still marked Parmigiano Reggiano, but the rind is engraved with parallel lines to indicate to the consumer that this is not the highest level, and probably best consumed young. And the third category is for wheels with more significant flaws, and the rind and all identifying marks are removed, so the cheese is sold as generic table cheese.
Renato Giudici taps a wheel photo credit Kristine Jannuzzi
“Sometimes when I do events and find a defect while I’m tapping a wheel, people who are watching turn their noses up. But to me it’s a beautiful thing that there are defects, and I’m not just saying it because if there aren’t any, I lose my job,” says Stocchi, laughing. “But the fact that there are defects indicates even more the artisanal quality of our product—we work with raw milk, without preservatives, each year there are many variations. Anyone who works with something in nature knows that not everything always goes how we would want or expect. I always say the day when we have 100% perfect Parmigiano Reggiano, we’d have to ask ourselves some questions, because it’s not an industrial product, so it’s normal that sometimes there are flaws.”
The number of wheels with defects remains low; in recent years, approximately 10% fell into the second category, and only about 1.5% were classified as third category.
“To do this job requires great passion, respect, and humility. My elder colleagues tell me you never stop learning, even after 50 years of doing it,” recounted Stocchi. “The day you think you’ve learned everything is the day you’ll start making errors.”