Parmigiano Reggiano at the CASEIFICIO UGOLOTTI cheese factory, Parma, Italy

Our continued wanderings around the heat of northern Italy lead us to Parma, Italy, in between Bologna and Milan. (With Modena, the capital of balsamic vinegar production and Ferrari cars between Bologna and Parma). The two primary agricultural products here are Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and Parma Ham. We opted for the cheese.

There are 5 adjacent régions (Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Mantua and Bologna) located between the Po and Reno rivers that make up the exclusive area that produces Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. "Parmigiano Reggiano" is a controlled brand that represents a "protected domain of origin" (PDO/DOP). "The Consortium" determines the rules of the Parmigiano game and these rules have been codifed in EU law. There are many aged, salted white cheeses, but Parmigiano Reggiano only comes from here. In fact, the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium is actively involved in the process. First, and foremost, the Consortium must approve your factory, assign you a number and it is the authority that comes and inspects your product and stamps it as 1st, 2nd or 3rd quality.

We toured the Caseificio (literally "casein maker") Ugolotti (the founder of the factory 40 years ago). The factory, shop and restaurant are on the outskirts of Parma, just a short city bus ride from the downtown.

The factory must (and does) receive milk twice a day from local farms. All of the milk used to produce Parmigiano Reggiano must be from the region. The diet of the cows in terms of grass, hay and corn is specified and controlled by the Consortium. You can read all the rules of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese making for yourself.

The morning milk run

None of the milk is pasteurized. The evening milk is allowed to sit and separate into cream and skim milk. This skim milk from the evening before is mixed with the whole, fresh (must be delivered within two hours of milking) morning milk. Some of the whey is added back in. Rennet (only from calf's stomach!) is then added to the milk. the excess whey is sold for animal feed. Nothing is wasted.

The Caseificio Ugolotti, we visited, produces 18 wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano every day (7 days a week).

Each vat holds 1000 liters of milk. Note that the photo is deceiving. The bottom of the vat is below the floor. Each vat will produce two wheels of cheese which (when dried) will weigh 40 Kg. This factory produces 2 wheels a day, thus 9 vats.

After the curd forms and is broken up, the cheese is cooked at a precise temperature and coagulates into granules and these settle to the bottom of the vats. 

After an hour or so of settling, the cheese is pulled up by hand; a two man job.

And placed into the initial molds. 

The cheese will sit under a weight in the milk room for 24 hours. The goal is extracting water. From there, they go to the salting room.

The cheese wheels, now 24 hours old, will be placed in metal forms, lined with a stencil that has the all important labeling information that goes onto the cheese rind. The factory's official number. After another 24 hours they are placed in the salt baths. This is a fully saturated salt solution. they will stay here for 3 months after which the salt has penetrated 3 cm into the wheel. Each wheel is turned daily, by hand.

After 3 months, the cheese wheels are moved to the aging room.

Parmigiano Reggiano must be aged for a minimum of 12 months. There are 12,000 wheels shown in this picture, aged from 12 months to 60 months! At a retail price of approximately €15 per kilogram, this picture represents approximately $10M of cheese!!

After a year of aging, the Consortium visits the factory (quarterly) and assigns a grade to each wheel. This is done, by hand,  by tapping the wheel and listening for hollows. First quality has no hollows or large cracks. The Parmigiano Reggiano brand and year is then hot branded into the side of the first quality wheels. Minor hollows and cracks are assigned second quality. The second quality wheels are scored with 1 cm ridges to identify them as second quality. They can still be sold for industrial and restaurant purposes. The third quality wheels have all Parmigiano Reggiano labelling removed and are sold for industrial purposes.

Interestingly, the contract of the master cheese maker (and, of course, you must have a master cheese maker) specifies he must produce 90% 1st quality wheels per year. If he produces more than a certain amount of 3rd quality wheels, he is on the hook financially for them! (I asked about malpractice assurance but they didn't understand the concept.)

The storage room is kept quite warm and quite humid so some mold does form on the outside of the wheel. It's not a health risk but doesn't look good so there is, of course, an automated robot (fromt he 1950's) that moves down the rows and brushes the rims of the cheese wheels free of mold.

Of course, after the tour, we had a delicious tasting of 12, 24 and 36 month aged chesses. And, there is a beautiful restaurant and gift shop in which to buy further products. Overall, a great factory tour and a very interesting product.

The Ducati Factory and Museum Tour, Bologna Italy

While meandering through the heat and crowds of northern Italy, our travels brought us to Bologna, home of the discoverer of the radio, Marconi, and the father of Italian motorcycling, Ducati.

Ducati, now owned by Audio/Volkswagen, produces their motorcycles, here in Bologna, in a 78000 m² (840,000 sq ft) factory. The factory is, of course, located on Via Antonio Cavalieri Ducati street.

They offer tours, of both a museum and the factory, in English and Italian albeit on slightly different schedules. Online réservations and tickets are required. Masks and closed toe shoes are also required.

The tour of the factory and museum costs 32€, about $35 as I write this. A bit pricey, to my mind, like their bikes.

After passing through security at the gate and receiving a souvenir lanyard and ID card, the group gathers in the visitor center.

All kinds of Ducati swag, except for the bikes themselves are available. Again, fairly pricey but a mecca for Ducati fans.

The tour is quite good. There is, however, NO PHOTOGRAPHY, quite a bummer. They put stickers on the lenses of your phone!

In the winter, off season, the factory produces about 100 bikes a day with about 200 employees. In the summer, they produce 300 bikes a day with seasonal workers booting the rolls to 600. All of the bikes are spoken for. No dealer inventory at this time.  There were lots of young adults assembling bikes, all wearing black Ducati shorts and red Ducati shirts (following the Star Trek, red shirt for engineering tradition).

The factory follows the Toyota Kaizen, just-in-time, manufacturing process. There is engine assembly, engine testing, engine/frame integration, whole bike testing, quality control and inspection and shipping operations. 90% of the parts of the bike are sourced in Italy. Only two parts are machined at the factory. One is the cam for the Ducati Desmodromic valve closure mechanism, of which Ducati is very proud. This arrives as a rough casts and is machined to tight tolerances on site. A full, dry, moving model of an engine with the Desmodromic system is displayed.

The engines (4? different models) are assembled by two person teams on 11-32 stations depending on the engine. Each station has a prefilled tray of parts for that station as well as all of the tools needed for assembly. Cordless electric drivers each with their own bits (and torque settings, I imagine) are available. No bit changing. Every engine is held in a jig that allows it to be positioned in nearly any orientation necessary for assembly.

The completed engines are oiled and tested by an electric motor to 2500 rpm with measurement of oil pressure.

The engines are then boxed, temporarily, and moved to the engine/frame integration lone by a robotic cart that follows a painted line on the floor. This was one of the only robotic machines. The bikes are essentially assembled by hand.

The frame/engine integration lines are four person teams that move with the bikes from station to station. Again, prefilled parts trays and every tool at every station.

After frame/engine integration, the bikes are fueled and started in front of large ventilation hoods. All systems tested and measured with digital connections to a handful of connectors.

The bikes are then taken to a Dynomometer like setup for moving tests.

Next comes the final inspection for cosmetics. AS THEY SAID, this is mostly done by women who they think have a better eye for imperfections. Their words.

Then the bikes go to shipping. Of note, the shipper does final assembly of seats, mirrors and small plastic fairing parts before delivering to dealers. You cannot pick up a bike at the factory, but there is a dealership across the street!

Of note, there is a separate section of the factory behind a sealed, bright red, Ducati door where they work on the one off, competion, moto GP bikes. They take this competition very seriously and security is very tight.

The museum has a separate entrance and is above a portion of the factory. Interestingly, Antonio Ducati was a peer of Marconi and worked on early radio technology. His Factory produced radio components. Destroyed in the war, Ducati rebuilt as a motorcycle production facility.

At the entrance you can test for several of the current models of bikes.

They then have a collection of essentially all of the racing bikes from the earliest days of electric bicycles to the latest GP bikes.

Overall a very nice collection and  display.

In front, you can see where employees park😂

An enjoyable and educational morning.