The History of This Must-Try Cheese Goes Back Nearly 1,000 Years

By Susan Sherrill Axelrod

An authentic wheel of Grana Padano carries a signature brand burned into its rind—so you know that if you see a diamond pattern and the cheese’s name, it must have been produced in the Valle Padana (Po River Valley) of Northern Italy according to strict rules with roots in a 12th-century Cistercian monastery. As production spread well beyond the monastery, each province had its own grana: Cheese made in Milan was “grana Milanese,” and “grana Mantovano” was from Mantua. In 1996, Grana Padano was awarded the European Union’s Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) designation.