Cheese is one of the most popular foods in the world. It can be soft and hard, sweet and salty, made from the milk of a cow, goat, sheep, buffalo and even a donkey. Cheese making can be challenging, requires patience, and involves many processes. Cheese sometimes matures over several months, or even years. Unsurprisingly, many of them can be worth their weight in gold.
The most expensive cheeses
Real golden cheese
Despite the fact that there are many expensive cheeses in the world, which became such because of the peculiarities of production, the most expensive of them was made using real gold. Foodies Chees added gold flakes to the exquisite stilton and the price of the product broke all records. Gold Cheese, the most expensive in the world, sells for $ 2064 a pound.
Since the most expensive cheeses are usually sold in the West, their weight is measured in pounds. One pound equals approximately 500 grams
Donkey cheese
The next most expensive cheese is considered to be cheese, which is made from the milk of special Balkan donkeys living only in one place in the Zasavica reserve, located along the river of the same name. To make just one kilogram of flavored (some call it smelly) white and crumbly cheese, cheese dairy workers must manually milk 25 liters of milk. Pule cheese sells for $ 600-700 a pound.
Pule cheese is sold by appointment only
“Elk” cheese
The Moose farm in northern Sweden produces the cheese of the same name from the milk of three moose cows living there. The animals are named Jullan, June and Helga, and it takes 2 hours a day to milk just one of them. Moose cows are milked only from May to September. The unusual cheese is served in the most respectable Swedish restaurants at a price of about $ 500-600 per pound. Farmers produce just over 300 kilograms of cheese per year.
Horse cheese
One of the most exquisite Italian cheeses is called Caciocavallo Podolico, which means “horse” cheese, although it is made not from mare’s milk, but from cow’s milk. Previously, cheese was hung on the back of a horse to form a hard crust on it. Although Caciocavallo is made from cow’s milk, it is not taken from ordinary cows, but from a special breed of cows, whose livestock numbers no more than 25 thousand and which are milked only from May to June. The final cost of a pear-shaped cheese with a shiny crust and a delicate creamy core is around $ 500 a pound.
“Mountain” cheese
Beaufort d’Été is a French cheese made from the milk of cows grazing in an area in the foothills of the French Alps. To get one wheel of cheese weighing 40 kilograms, you have to milk 500 liters of milk from 35 cows. The cheese is aged for about one and a half years and a sweet, oily, aromatic product with aromas of nuts and fruits is obtained. You can buy a pound of Beaufort d’Été by paying at least $ 45.